I
n Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor
Hugo’s classic tale of a love-
lorn, bell-ringing hunchback,
the author sings the praises of
Gothic architecture while disparaging
“the modern monuments of Paris”
circa 1831. The towers of the Church
of Saint-Sulpice, he writes, are like
two clarinets; the Legion of Honor,
a slice of pastry; and the new corn
market—a round building crowned
with a slate-gray dome near the
food stalls of Les Halles—is like “an
English jockey’s cap on a grand scale.”
In fact, the giant ironwork dome
was a technical tour de force. In 1889,
when the corn market, following
the whims of capital, was convert-
ed into the Bourse de Commerce (a
commodities exchange for the trade
of grain, sugar, and the like), and
the World’s Fair opened with great
fanfare in Paris, the Bourse’s dome
was celebrated alongside the newly
constructed Eiffel Tower as an exem-
plar of French modernity.
Fast-forward to 2020, when this
historic building in the very center
of Paris prepares to welcome the art
of today. Painstakingly restored to its
19th-century glory, yet boldly trans-
formed by Pritzker Prize–winning
Japanese architect Tadao Ando, the
Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collec-
tion will open in June, displaying the
first in a series of rotating exhibitions
drawn primarily from the art collec-
tion of François Pinault, founder of
the company that eventually became
SECOND ACT
“Respect for the architecture and
the art of the past is important. It can
lead you toward the future,” says
Pinault (opposite), photographed with
his son François-Henri Pinault, the
chairman and CEO of Kering. above:
19th-century woodwork adorns former
offices. Details, see In This Issue.
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