Chris Dercon on the New Fondation Cartier in Paris

On 25 October, the new Fondation Cartier opened at 2 place du Palais-Royal, a Haussmann edifice dating from 1855, located right next to the Louvre in the heart of Paris. Designed by Jean Nouvel, the expansive exhibition space features movable floors, while the soaring atrium offers views across the bustling square at the front of the building.

The inaugural ‘Exposition Générale’ (General Exhibition), curated by Béatrice Grenier and Grazia Quaroni and designed by Formafantasma, presents 600 wide-ranging works from 40 years of the Fondation Cartier and includes artists such as Joan Mitchell, James Turrell and Francesca Woodman. Together, the show encompasses an eclectic mix of artistic disciplines, materials and international perspectives, reflecting the foundation’s commitment to fostering dialogue between art, design and contemporary culture.

Here, director Chris Dercon speaks to Sean Burns about the foundation’s unique vision and the inventiveness of its architecture.

Sean Burns What does the Cartier foundation offer in relation to the others in Paris, such as the Fondation Louis Vuitton or the Pinault Collection?

Chris Dercon When people ask me about the others in the city, I really have to stress that there are many more than those you’ve mentioned. I’ve always worked with foundations that are adventurous and often smaller in scale, particularly in Paris. We shouldn’t forget the influence of Kadist, Lafayette Anticipations, the Fondation Pernod Ricard or the Fondation H, which connects Madagascar and France.

Nevertheless, the Fondation Cartier is different, as it has been collecting and commissioning from the very beginning [in 1984], across artistic disciplines. We don’t have separate sections for design, architecture, cinema or photography. The collection has grown organically from the Fondation’s exhibitions over the past 40 years, with most works commissioned specifically for these shows or developed through long-term collaborations with artists. The new building is designed to sustain this ongoing dialogue.

The foundation has also been doing things that probably don’t have a name – whether inviting John Cale or Lou Reed, finding a spectacular way to present Ferrari’s industrial design or showcasing our garden by Lothar Baumgarten.

SB How does this eclectic approach to collecting and curating manifest in this inaugural ‘Exposition Générale’?

CD Numerous dialogues took place – not only among artists, but between artists and researchers, as well as between artists and thinkers. A notable example is the immersive installation Exit (2008) by architects Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro, on view in ‘Exposition Générale’. We acquire artworks under contract, allowing us to reconstruct and critically engage with them. In the case of Exit, this involved updating the data, as the work enables viewers to observe and analyse information on global migration up to the year 2024.

This eclectic and collaborative way of working, and this approach to building a collection, is, I believe, quite unique. You can see it reflected in the architecture itself: the pieces aren’t simply scattered or randomly placed. I love the new V&A East Storehouse in London, for example, where the collection is made visible through the architecture in an inventive way; I think it’s wonderful. Its greatest quality is that it inspires a genuine desire – almost a lust – to curate, as I also mentioned to my colleagues there. We want to achieve something dynamic like that here. 

SB You also have a publishing arm. 

CD I think another way in which we are different is that, like Tate, we publish our own works, and we give the authors considerable freedom. We have decided to republish texts that we originally commissioned for our illustrated books – called beaux livres, or ‘beautiful books’, in French – which had somewhat been overlooked. We decided it was time to bring them back into circulation.

SB Could you say a little about the current display?

CD The display is extremely precise, because we collect what others do not. Many of these artists are not represented by galleries, and one cannot find them on the auction market. I think this approach gives way to new models, new formats, new ways of thinking.

In every collection, after 10 years you begin to ask yourself: what do we have here? What should we do next? After 20 years, you ask the same questions, and things start to become tangible. After 30 years, you can start to say, ‘This is what we are doing.’ After 40 years, things become much clearer.

Formafantasma, the exhibition designers, have done a superb job. The catalogue includes a particularly compelling conversation with the Formafantasma team – who outdid themselves – admitting that working in this building was extremely challenging. Architecture is a discipline of constraint. The necessity to contend with this constraint – whether working with or against it – makes architecture endlessly fascinating, because every gesture, especially in museum design, must be both powerfully blunt and radically expressive. One will never forget the Centre Pompidou [by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano], so striking in its radicalism and audacious directness.

Today, what we have lost is the real courage required to invent a museum architecture suited to these new experiences

SB Can you talk about the architectural proposition of this foundation?

CD I’ve always been interested in museums as a form of transformation, and I think museum architecture expresses that. I’ll never forget when Glenn Lowry, the former director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, said that every extension and every renovation should be about transformation, because art itself is about transformation.

Today, what we have lost is the real courage required to invent a museum architecture suited to these new experiences. We must be incredibly courageous in that regard, but also in terms of the way we display. The exhibition displays and museum architecture of Lina Bo Bardi, El Lissitzky and Carlo Scarpa – let us look back at that. I believe the architecture of this new foundation achieves something similar, while also engaging with one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of modern architecture: modular architecture.

SB Are you able to discuss what you have planned or share your vision for the future?

CD We have the collection on display until the end of August 2026, after which we give carte blanche to an artist I met in London during my time at Tate Modern: a young man from Ghana, Ibrahim Mahama. I first met him in 2013. 

SB Incredible. 

CD Taking place right across from the Louvre, I believe this will be a very radical gesture: inviting someone who, alongside artists such as Michael Armitage and others, is considering what a museum or art space in Africa could be – one designed for the continent, rather than imitating the Western model. This is also why we installed Chéri Samba’s works J’aime la couleur (I Like the Colour, 2010) and La Vraie Carte du monde (The Real World Map, 2011) in ‘Exposition Générale’, with Samba essentially saying, ‘Hey, me too, I belong here.’ It goes beyond carte blanche; it is true commissioning, involving close collaboration with the artist.

SB Thank you. 

‘Exposition Générale’ is at Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris, until 23 August 2026 

^{Main image: The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. Courtesy: Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain; photograph: Cyril Marcilhacy}