← The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
The Grand Tourist Reports: A New Home for the Fondation Cartier
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- [00:00]
A
I think that architects are really more than ever participating in shaping what the new museum, its cultural policy can be. And I think that I hope that the museum is going towards a place where it's recognizing its role as a. As really a content editor, where it's proposing itself to be truly a place that is reliable from a cultural and research and knowledge standpoint.
- [00:29]
B
Hi, I'm Dan Rubenstein and this is the Grand Tourist. I've been a design journalist for more than 20 years, and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food and travel. All the elements of a world of life. And welcome to the first episode of what we're calling the Grand Tourist Reports, concise dispatches and insights from the newsmakers and tastemakers of the day. This week, the collecting world descends on Paris for exhibitions such as Art Basel and Design Miami. And just add to all the drama. The Louvre has made headlines as the victim of a brazen daylight jewelry heist that seems straight out of an unbelievable TV drama. But to me, the most breathtaking event of the week is actually just steps away from the scene of the crime. The opening of the new home of the Fondation Cartier at the Place du Palais Royal. The new museum, designed by architect Jean Nouvel, takes over a historic Haussmanian building, which for many years was a legendary department store and will now house one of the most exciting contemporary art institutions in the world. The Fondation Cartier began in the 1980s by the beloved house we all know for their jewelry and timepieces, and for decades was housed in a more modern glass building, also by Nouvelle in Paris. 14th arrondissement. I spoke with the Fondation's Beatrice Grenier, director of strategic projects and international programs, as well as co curator of the inaugural exhibition about the institution's incredible new home and its fascinating history, how Jean Nouvel's architecture is literally quite moving, and much more. Before we return to the program, a word from our sponsor, Holly Hunt. When creating any space with a modern, timeless sensibility, a trusted partner is absolutely key. For more than 40 years, designers and collectors have turned to Holly Hunt as a source for exceptional craftsmanship, flawless execution, and an innovative mindset rooted in a modern vision that is equally comfortable in classic or traditional interiors. Holly Hunt designs balance both forms with lasting comfort. Pieces that feel as relevant today as they will decades from now. Every piece is shaped by artisans and expert fabricators who bring precision, skill and soul to every step of the process, using the finest wood, stone, glass and metal, often with finishes that showcase the natural artisanal qualities of each element. Explore the full Holly Hunt portfolio, from furniture and lighting to textiles, wall coverings, window shades, and fine art at one of its showrooms or@holly hun.com and so before we start speaking about the. And its new home, tell me a bit about your. Your own background and how you came to work with the organization.
- [03:22]
A
I, I used to live in New York. That's where I studied. That's where I started my career as an art historian. I worked for several years as an interpreter. And as for the artist Tai Guoqiang, and I was managing his art projects. And that's how I came to encounter the Fondation Cartier in Paris. And with, you know, Tsai Guo Chang had been an artist in residency at the Fondation Cartier in the early 90s. He was really one of the first to. It was. I mean, the Fondation invited him to have his first project in France. And anyway, so because with Cai Guoqiang, I had worked a lot on establishing his private art foundation in Chester in New Jersey. We were working at the time with Frank Gehry as an architect to develop an archive space, studio space, future residency space, the Phone Nation. Cartier approached me to join the team on this phase of design and to work with the Atelier Gen Nouvelle to kind of coordinate this very ambitious institutional transformation. So I somehow crossed the Atlantic without really knowing.
- [04:40]
B
That sounds amazing. So for the completely uninitiated, what is the Fondation Cartier like? How did it first begin?
- [04:47]
A
Yeah, the Fondation Cartier is a private cultural institution that was founded by the maison Quartier in 1984 with the vision to make contemporary art accessible to the widest audience possible. One has to remember that at the time in the 80s, there was really no culture of kind of corporate sponsorship in the arts in Europe, in France especially. And the Maison Cartier was really the pioneer in terms of creating an opening, in a way, even a legislation that would allow corporations to kind of make. Yeah. Create this kind of cultural philanthropy. So the Fondation Cartier was first based in Jouy Enjozace, which is a kind of on the outskirts of Paris, and developed residency program for 10 years. It hosted artists in residence, invited them to create work on site, and created an exhibition program. And very soon that location felt a bit far away from the center of Paris and also a bit too small at the time. The president, Dominique Perrin, commissioned Jean Nouvelle to design a building for the Phone nations cartier within the 14th district of Paris on the Left bank and at the Time. Jean Novelt was also just starting really to be known as the kind of global figure in the architecture world. He was working on the Institut du Montdarabe, which opened in 87, which is really his kind of breakthrough building. A few Years later in 94, the Fondation Cartier opened this now extremely iconic, all glass building surrounded by a beautiful garden designed by Lothar Baumgarten. And the program changed with this change of architecture. Of course, architecture always provokes transformational kind of institutional, you know, chapters. And the foundation kind of, instead of resuming a residency program, developed a contemporary art program and hosted exhibitions in this building for. For 30 years. So it's been a 40 year, 41 years now journey.
- [07:23]
B
And with that journey, is there any particular exhibition could be recent, or maybe not even that recent, that you think really exemplifies what the foundation actually is really all about?
- [07:36]
A
Yeah, that's a great question that we really examined in the context of the inaugural exhibition. We wanted to open in this new building with an exhibition that would remind kind of audiences, but also introduce to our new audiences what the Fondation Quartier is about and how it has very much pioneered in terms of bringing and identifying fields that the kind of more mainstream or academic contemporary art world doesn't recognize to be, to be art yet. So, I mean, I have so many examples. There have been, you know, in Issey Miyake exhibition titled Making Things, for example, or, you know, in the late 80s, back when the phonetion was still at Julien Jose, there was exhibition called Architecture Machines, so including like, you know, Liz Diller at the time, who was just beginning really, their kind of conceptual work. More recent exhibitions. I'm thinking about the exhibition Nous des Arbres, so Trees, which was an exhibition that was about really identifying precisely the life of trees as being, you know, living organisms that we completely ignore in our encyclopedia that we can't recognize on the street. I mean, it was an exhibition that was so fantastic in terms of showing our human ignorance vis a vis the esthetic world of nature. I'm thinking about Southern Geometries, which introduced the work of the Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani to the architectural community.
- [09:42]
B
And so it seems like, you know, it has a reputation for being a very sort of serious undertaking. Like it's a very, you know, like the shows are quite deep and, you know, I would say it's sort of like advanced contemporary art. It's not always about just big, splashy names per se. Do you think that has to do with the fact that the Cartier foundation was sort of the first of these. It has something, it had something to prove in the 80s, right. When they were the first to kind of delve into this sort of adventure, right?
- [10:10]
A
Yes, I think so. I would like to think that. But I think it's also coming from a really wonderful sort of open mindedness and idea of liberty that the institution tries to share with the audiences. In terms of which is really the perspective of the artists and architects and creators themselves, I think to really try to show art, architecture, industrial design, I mean science, botany. Yeah, data science as being aesthetically and emotionally really powerful. And the Fondation being a kind of gateway to other forms of knowledge.
- [11:02]
B
And of course, in a few days from when this comes out, the Fondation will open in a new space near the Louvre which sort of reunites the organization was Jean Nouvel who designed the original space. So why the need for a new space?
- [11:17]
A
Many reasons. Even though the building that Gene Nouvet designed In the early 90s remains extremely contemporary and timely, I think that there, you know, there was a sense that the foundation Cartier and this was a long time coming. You know, even though the construction was. Was about five years time, you know, the Quartier had been always in transformation, always growing in terms of its international partnerships, but especially kind of wanting to offer to its audiences a bit more than an exhibition space. You know, we've always had a very dynamic bookstore, for example. But you know, we, we wanted to have also an auditorium for examp. A space where, you know, restaurant, cafe, where people can come and linger a little longer and so be an institution. That being an institution that had programmed for 40 years the ambition was that had clearly become more than an exhibition space. It is really a space where culture is manifested and where audiences can come to socialize and to. And to learn in many different ways than only from the exhibition.
- [12:44]
B
So it's a bigger space, much more functional and it's also much closer to the heart of Paris. Right. You can't get any closer to smack dab in the middle of Paris than the location that you're in. Tell us about the building because it's a. I believe it's an 1855 Housemanian, you know, very impressive structure that's had a really interesting history.
- [13:06]
A
Yes, indeed. This is very unique about this project. From the perspective of Jean Nouvel, who is widely known as an architect, I think that has really transformed expectations about museums, especially architecture for exhibition spaces. But the whole question, or at least architectural question for this project was, you know, how to Transform an existing historical building that's in front of the Louvre and how to bring it up to speed, both from a discursive standpoint, like for contemporary audiences, but also from a functional standpoint. So, you know, it's a building, as you mentioned, that was built in 1855 at the same time as the first World Expo in Paris. And it's really iconic in terms of it being a symbol of the Haussmanian urbanization project of the first part, which took place in the second half of the 19th century. And it's in front of one of the oldest public squares in Paris. So it's really this symbol of this kind of very Parisian modernity, with the arcades that run along the whole length of the building. And what Jean Novelt wanted to do was precisely both highlight this and embrace this history, but also modernize it. So opening the building onto the street with these very tall glass bay windows and making it feel almost transparent. So when you're standing in the middle of the building, you feel the heart of Paris, you feel the historical heart.
- [15:01]
B
Of the city, really, to show some breadth of an experience. And back to the phonetion Cartier for a second. I know that the building since 1855 obviously has hosted a lot of different tenants. If you will, tell us a little bit about the history of what was contained in the building, because a lot of that has been sort of reflected in the new, or is being referenced a little bit in its new capacity.
- [15:29]
A
Yes. So the building was initially opened as a hotel. A very brief moment. It served to initially, when it was built for the World Expo, it served to house the exhibitors for coming to Paris. I mean, it was an incredible time. Of course, Napoleon III was commissioning all of this new public infrastructure. I mean, he had just gone to the Crystal palace of London and felt, you know, amazing competition with, with the city. And so it was a hotel that was meant to house all of this kind of influx of tourists and new urban dwellers. And quickly after that, it became, it was bought by an emerging little merchant group which eventually became a humongous commercial and cultural force in Paris, the Grand Magazine du Louvre. So it was for more than 150 years, a department store, which is an incredible irony in a sense, but also very beautiful history because the department store was really, at least in its first 50 years, kind of inspired by what the World Expo invented, which is to say the principle of democratite, democratizing access to new artifacts and new technologies. You know, the World Expo exhibited machinery, but also high art. And the department Store was the place where one could go year long and kind of, yeah, these new household technologies, new textiles coming from all over the world, and specifically the Grand Magazin du d', Oeuvre, because it was so, I mean, central to the city, became itself really a cultural place that exhibited, organized small exhibitions. And this is how we came up with the title of our inaugural exhibition, which is called Exposition General. So the grand magazine organized these exhibitions which were called Exposition Generales and put together all of these different objects. And we wanted to kind of inspire the inaugural exhibition with this spirit of allowing painting to coexist with industrial design and putting all of the different disciplines of art on the same level playing field.
- [18:05]
B
And so how many floors is the new location?
- [18:09]
A
The new location in many ways has no determined kind of floors. I mean, it has three floors. But what Jean Nouvelle really invented for as a new kind of display technology or apparatus is a system of five movable platforms. So it's platforms that are 200 to 300 square meters and they can be adjusted to different heights. So just imagine, you know, giant kind of elevators without surrounding walls that are. That constitute really the exhibition space. And they can be adjusted to different heights on a. At a maximum of 11 meters. And so meaning that for every exhibition, the wayfinding of the museum and the architecture of the building itself will change.
- [19:05]
B
Oh, wow. Okay. So is every exhibition going to take over the entire space?
- [19:11]
A
Essentially the inaugural exhibition is taking over the entire space, and so is the second. But within, within the, the this exhibition there are, you know, chapters, let's say. But there is no rule for the future. And it's definitely possible to organize, you know, separate exhibition spaces.
- [19:39]
B
Well, with such a historic building, I'm sure it must have been really difficult to kind of in a city like Paris known and France as well, you know, known for its historic preservation of architecture and of event of landscape. I'm referring to my how to Buy a Chateau episode, which if people haven't listened to, was quite the adventure for a lot of designers. Like, tell me about the challenges of like working in such a. I mean, it sounds. What you're doing is kind of radical in terms of like being able to move walls and move things up and down, but to do so in a space like that.
- [20:14]
A
Yes, well, the, the building itself, I mean, the facade is, is protected. So we didn't, you know, move the actual lime Parisian limestone that stayed in place and it's protected because the. What we call the Order of the Rue Rivoli was designed by Percy and Fontaine, the architects who also designed the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. So, yeah, so the challenge of this space was everywhere, except that it's not visible in the project, because the construction happened inside the building and really was invisible to any kind of passerby or anything. And what Jean Nouvelle did, he had this. His truly remarkable vision was to gut three stories of the building and insert at the center of it these five platforms, which, of course, from a technological standpoint, are not in themselves never seen before, because they replicate, let's say, albeit more complex, but the basic system of an elevator, let's say, or a theater platform or aircraft carrier. So the engineering of it exists, but the vision to integrate this kind of scale of movement within a historical building is this clash of the epochs that it creates that makes this kind of aesthetic so, so unique. And also, I want to say, very Parisian, because it's really a kind of mechanical modernity with cables and pulley that it's evoking. That, of course, was really the epoch of the World Expo and the first kind of iron structures of the Eiffel Tower, et cetera.
- [22:19]
B
And for the first show, the Exposition General. What are some of the highlights of the pieces that will be shown there?
- [22:26]
A
It's a lot. I mean, this show, as I explained, is called Exposition General, and it's citing either iconic kind of exhibitions that really opened up new topics for contemporary art, or at least from our perspective, so really trying to bring to the foreground the importance of architecture, of industrial design, including a big important chapter on the question of nature. And then we have also an important part on craft and also science and technology. So, I mean, if I have to choose, I mean, I would say that one of the works that I'm really proud that we included are, for example, Exit, which is a work that the Fondation Cartier commissioned in 2008 at the time of the COP15 conference in Paris. And the idea was to bring together the philosopher Paul Virilio, together with Diller's Cafidio Ren Fro, Laura Kurgan from Colombia, and think together, how can we show data about our planet in a sensitive and impactful way in a museum setting, so that audiences can be moved and understand all of the ramifications of climate change, including migration, financial crisis. And it was really a way to bring into the museum a kind of mini university of social science. So this is one of the major works that I'm very proud of. There's also. We included a work by Bernie Kraus, which is a collaboration with Soundwalk Collective and it's interpretation or it's a. Yeah, it's an interpretation by Soundwalk Collective of of the archives of the bioacoustician Bernie Kraus, who spent most of his life recording soundscapes that were becoming extinct. And then there's also, I mean, just under or yet to be recognized masterpieces like monumental installation by Solange Besoa, Brazilian artist who's working with organic materials, in our case, hundreds of thousands of feathers. There's a beautiful work by Olga de Amaral, a Colombian textile artist, and many others, which I hope audiences will come to discover.
- [25:27]
B
And if you had to describe the new building and the new adventure that you guys are about to embark on and this new era, if you had to describe it in three words, what three words would you use to describe them?
- [25:42]
A
I would say open, exhilarating, completely new.
- [25:50]
B
Thank you to my guest Beatrice Grenier, as well as to everyone at Cartier and the Fondation Cartier for making this episode happen. The editor of the Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don't forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, the Grand Tourist Curator at, and follow me on Instagram danrubenstein and follow the Grand Tourist on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. And leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Till next time.