the luxury-goods group Kering.
His more than 5,000 pieces include
modernist masterworks by Mon-
drian and Rothko alongside a heavy
concentration of works by contem-
porary art stars such as Jeff Koons,
Urs Fischer, and Cindy Sherman, as
well as paintings, photographs, vid-
eos, sculptures, and installations by
younger and emerging artists from
around the globe.
It’s a risky business: a new Parisian
cultural institution devoted to the
art of the present, financed by and
centered to a very significant degree
on the taste of a single individual.
France, with its centuries-long tradi-
tion, handed down from the monar-
chy to the Republic, of government
support for the arts, tends to view
such private endeavors with suspicion.
(LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault’s
Fondation Louis Vuitton, occupy-
ing a show-stopping, Frank Gehry–
designed building in the Bois de
Boulogne, is a recent exception.) And
then the Bourse’s nearest neighbors
are the Louvre, a mere stone’s throw to
the southwest, and the Centre Georges
Pompidou, a 10-minute walk east—
heady company, to say the least, for a
fledgling museum.
But François Pinault, a man not
lacking in ambition, seems to savor the
risk. And he takes the long view. It was
20 years ago that the self-made bil-
lionaire from Brittany, who parlayed
his family’s modest timber company
into a luxury-brand empire before he
fell hard for contemporary art, first
announced his intention to create a
museum for his growing collection.
The original site, appropriate for this
man who speaks with pride of his
humble origins, was an abandoned
Renault car factory on an island
in the Seine to the west of Paris,
long a potent symbol in the French
workers movement.
Five years later, citing endless ad-
ministrative delays, Pinault scrapped
those plans and turned to Ven-
ice, where the Palazzo Grassi, an
18th-century mansion on the Grand
Canal that had served as a cultural
venue, was seeking a new owner. He
acquired it in 2005 and two years later
leased the nearby, historic Punta della
Dogana, or customs house, from the
city of Venice. He had Ando subtly
revamp both spaces, now home to
site-specific installations as well as the-
matic selections of work Pinault owns.
HALLOWED HALLS
Newly created galleries are bathed in natural light ready to display artwork.
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