Paris (AFP)

The billionaire François Pinault will open, in January, a few months in advance, the museum in the heart of Paris housing his important collection, enough to boost morale in an art world depressed by the health crisis.

The former Bourse de Commerce, renovated and transformed into a contemporary art center, will open its doors on January 23 when a deadline in spring was scheduled.

"This opening will enrich the European landscape of institutions dedicated to the art of our time and will contribute, after the hard year 2020, to the rebirth of cultural life in Paris", soberly underlined the patron in a press release from Pinault. Collection.

Ideally located between the Louvre and the Marais, near the Forum des Halles, the new museum was expected in June as the cultural event of spring.

But confinement had forced François Pinault to postpone its launch for a year, the time that many finishing works were completed.

The site was delivered on time by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, ​​after three years of work.

Pritzker Prize for Architecture 1995, Tadao Ando carried out a project where the old and the contemporary blend harmoniously, by pouring inside the old Circular Stock Exchange a cylinder of raw concrete with a diameter of 29 meters and 9 meters high, under the 19th century glass roof.

Although slowed down by sanitary constraints, this finishing work could be completed at the end of the year.

"Cultural life has suffered terribly from the health crisis. As much as the restrictions still applied today to the reception of the public, what seriously disturbs it is the uncertainty", argued with AFP. former Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon, adviser to François Pinault.

François Pinault, a Breton of modest origin, who has become one of the greatest French fortunes in retail and luxury goods (the Kering group), has built up in half a century one of the most important collections of contemporary art.

Paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, videos, films, sound works….

will be exhibited in around ten modular spaces over the entire 6,800 m2 of exhibition spaces (out of a total of 10,500 m2).

The vast Pinault collection, dedicated to art from the 1960s to the present day, is made up of some 10,000 works by nearly 380 artists.

Much has already been exhibited in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi and at the Punta della Dogana, two sites where Pinault Collection has already organized 27 exhibitions.

© 2020 AFP