Fondation Cartier. Reopens in the Heart of Paris

This autumn, a long-awaited opening has electrified the city’s cultural scene: the new Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain has unveiled its home just steps away from the Louvre, inside the legendary building of the Grands Magasins du Louvre. A place once dedicated to commerce now becomes a cathedral of contemporary art — where history, architecture, and imagination meet under one roof.

The relocation marks a turning point for the Foundation, which for forty years has been known for its bold curatorial voice and its luminous glass building on Boulevard Raspail, designed by Jean Nouvel in 1994. Today, the same architect returns to reinvent a vast Haussmann-era structure in the very heart of Paris — transforming a nineteenth-century department store into a contemporary art landmark.

More than an architectural move, it is a cultural statement. The new Fondation Cartier opens its doors with the major exhibition Exposition Générale, celebrating the artists, ideas, and global perspectives that have shaped its history since 1984. The project embodies a vision of openness and cross-disciplinary exchange — true to Cartier’s enduring belief that art, science, and design together expand the boundaries of culture.

From a Vision in the 1980s to a Global Art Platform

When Cartier founded its art foundation in 1984, the idea felt both radical and elegant — to give contemporary artists complete freedom within a space supported by one of the world’s most iconic luxury houses. Long before the word “philanthropy” became fashionable, Cartier positioned art not as sponsorship, but as dialogue — between creation and craftsmanship, science and poetry, nature and technology.

The first home of the Fondation Cartier was in Jouy-en-Josas, near Versailles, where a small modernist building became a meeting ground for avant-garde ideas. A decade later, in 1994, architect Jean Nouvel designed a new glass-and-steel structure on Boulevard Raspail in Paris — a building that itself became an artwork of transparency and light. The Fondation quickly turned into a cultural reference point, hosting exhibitions by David Lynch, Nan Goldin, Issey Miyake, Jean-Michel Othoniel, William Eggleston, and hundreds of others.

For forty years, the Foundation’s exhibitions have mirrored the spirit of their time — bringing together art and science, Indigenous voices and contemporary architects, major retrospectives and experimental installations. The move in 2025 to the monumental Grands Magasins du Louvre building is therefore both symbolic and necessary: a gesture of openness, scale, and continuity.

The Grands Magasins du Louvre (1887–1974)

«This monumental building was among the first department stores in Paris»

A symbol of 19th-century modernity and consumer culture

An archival image and a photograph of the recent excavation

«Remind us that the Fondation Cartier now stands on layers of Parisian history»

Commerce turned into culture

Fondation Cartier

«The move to the monumental Grands Magasins du Louvre building»

2025

Architecture: When History Becomes Space

The new Fondation Cartier occupies a place that has witnessed nearly two centuries of Parisian history. The building, facing the Louvre and the Palais Royal, once housed the Grands Magasins du Louvre — one of the first department stores in Europe, a symbol of 19th-century modernity and the golden age of commerce.

Architect Jean Nouvel, who designed the Fondation’s previous glass home on Boulevard Raspail, returned to reimagine this vast 8,500 m² Haussmannian structure. Rather than erasing its past, he chose to reveal it. The façade remains noble and symmetrical, while the interior has been transformed into a sequence of monumental volumes — flexible, fluid, and flooded with light.

Nouvel’s approach here is not nostalgia, but metamorphosis. Steel, concrete, and light form a dialogue with the building’s original bones. Floating platforms and open atriums allow artworks to breathe and visitors to wander freely, while subtle architectural details preserve traces of the building’s industrial memory.

The result is both museum and organism — a space that evolves with each exhibition, that connects street and sky, history and experiment. “A building that remembers, but also dreams,” as one critic described it.

Jean Nouvel’s new Fondation Cartier

«Opens under a glass canopy that floods the Haussmannian arches with daylight»

A dialogue between heritage and invention

A wooden model of the building

«Presents its poetic proportions»

A Paris façade reborn as a vessel for contemporary art

Inside, fluid architecture replaces static walls

«Concrete columns and suspended walkways create a spatial rhythm»

A living organism of art and structure

Exposition Générale: Forty Years of Encounters

The inaugural exhibition Exposition Générale celebrates forty years of the Fondation Cartier’s artistic journey — not as a retrospective, but as a living, breathing collection of ideas. It brings together more than six hundred works by artists from across the world, filling every level of the new building with colour, sound and movement.

Rather than being organised chronologically, the exhibition unfolds as a landscape — where sculptures, drawings, videos, and installations coexist like memories. Visitors wander freely between eras and voices, from Indigenous art of the Gran Chaco forest to contemporary experiments in light, sound and technology. The result feels less like a museum show and more like a city of art — open, layered, and alive.

Portraits of Artists and Thinkers by Alëxandrină Hristov

«A collective portrait of the art world»

Artists, thinkers, and visionaries who have shaped the Fondation Cartier’s story

A large stone disk on a metal support

«Author: Giuseppe Penone»

Meditative balance between weight and air — a dialogue between human gesture and the mineral world

A space with white curved structures and display cases

«The exhibition design itself becomes a sculpture»

A continuous flow guiding visitors through layers of art and architecture

In one gallery, a hyperreal sculpture of a woman stands motionless, holding two orange plastic bags — a figure both ordinary and deeply moving, like a still moment from real life. Nearby, a submarine by the visionary Belgian artist Panamarenko gleams under spotlights, a poetic machine ready to set sail into imagination.

Woman with Shopping Bags by Ron Mueck

«A hyperrealist figure standing motionless, caught between fragility and defiance»

A haunting presence that greets visitors at the entrance

Submarine (Pahama)

«A visionary machine by Panamarenko — part invention, part dream»

Suspended between science and imagination

A vibrant ceiling composition and wall relief work

«Freddy Mamani transforms Andean cosmology into architectural color and rhythm»

A celebration of identity and exuberance

Other spaces pulse with monumental scale: a towering wall of gold and orange shimmer like a field of light, while a single stone disc, precariously balanced on a metal rod, seems to freeze gravity. Between them, intricate totemic structures made of feathers, reeds and drawings tell stories of land, ancestry and continuity — echoing the voices of the Gran Chaco artists and the natural materials of Solange Pessoa’s installations.

Seen from above, the Fondation’s atrium becomes part of the exhibition itself: a theatre where art and architecture merge. Each floor opens a new perspective — from myth and material to silence and reflection — making Exposition Générale not just a celebration of the past, but a manifesto for the future of contemporary art.

Beyond the artworks, Exposition Générale extends its reach through a series of public programmes, talks, and creative workshops. Even the youngest visitors are invited to explore — the Foundation has published a beautifully illustrated Carnet de découvertes for children aged 6–12, turning the exhibition into a game of curiosity and imagination.

Exposition Générale

«Expositions»

2025

Exposition Générale

«Expositions»

2025

Exposition Générale

«Children's quest Carnet de découvertes»

2025

Visit and Explore

The new Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is located at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, in the very centre of Paris — just across from the Louvre. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. (with late openings on Tuesdays until 10 p.m.). Tickets can be booked directly on the Foundation’s official website: fondationcartier.com.

Visitors are encouraged to take time to explore the building’s multiple levels, where art, architecture and light create a seamless experience. The bookshop and café on the ground floor extend the visit into a space for reading, conversation and pause — true to the Fondation’s mission to make art part of daily life.

A Living Continuation

The reopening of the Fondation Cartier marks more than the arrival of a new museum — it signals a wider movement of rediscovering how contemporary art speaks to our world today. At ArtMostStore, we share this same vision: that collecting art is not only about ownership, but about connection — between people, time, and ideas.

Explore our curated selection of contemporary artists, from established names to emerging voices shaping today’s aesthetic landscape. Each work can live with you — not behind glass, but in dialogue with your own space.

Discover the ArtMostStore Collection →

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