There’s a lot going on in Paris’s art scene right now, from the massive refurbishments taking place at the Louvre to the striking installation ‘La Caverne’, which is set to take over the city’s oldest bridge in June (and our top pick for the best new thing to do in the world this year).
And soon, there’ll be a brand-new gallery in the mix, as a long-awaited space dedicated to Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti will be gracing the French capital.
According to Artsy, the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti has announced that Musée & École Giacometti, which will be housed inside the former Gare des Invalides train station in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, should finally open its doors in the latter half of 2028.
Revamping the station is part of wider urban renewal project Réinventer Paris, where lots of neglected heritage sites are set to be transformed. This project was won by two property developers, Emerige Group and Nexity, and the grand building itself was originally constructed for the 1900 World’s Fair.
Right now, the foundation’s home is Institut Giacometti, a tiny 350-square metre space in the 14th arrondissement, but the new museum, perched on the Seine and next to Pont Alexandre III, will boast 6,000 square metres in total.
Half of that will be dedicated to exhibition space – which includes permanent displays of Giacometti’s work, as well as temporary showcases of contemporary art and a recreated version of his atelier – and the other half will be home to a cafe, restaurant, bookshop and educational space.
There’s actually been some controversy relating to the size of the museum, with Paris-based Swiss journalist Mathieu van Berchem asking whether its scale was ‘a bit over the top?’ and noting Giacometti’s lean towards ‘simplicity’.
However, curator Peter Selz described Giacometti as someone ‘constantly at work,’ whose ‘hands never rest but move up and down modelling the clay on the armature, drawing figures and hands on paper napkins, envelopes, tabletops’, and it’s this approach which has inspired the school.
In fact, director Catherine Grenier believes all museums should be considered educational spaces, and this one, which is intended to cater to everybody, and not just prospective artists, will offer a ‘great way to get to grips with shapes and art forms that feel hermetic.’
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What can we expect to see at Musée & École Giacometti?
After Giacometti’s death in 1966, his estate was inherited by his wife Annette, who, until her passing in the early nineties, obsessively archived his catalogue of work. Much of it was stored in his tiny, 23 square metre rental studio in Montparnasse, all of which she removed and documented, from work he’d painted directly onto the walls to ashtrays stuffed with his cigarette butts.
Today, the collection comprises a staggering 10,000 items, with ‘thousands of drawings, over 400 sculptures, 100 paintings, a whole collection of decorative objets d’art, prints, everything that was in the studio,’ according to Grenier, who spoke to The Art Newspaper. ‘People don’t know we have masterpieces from the earliest period, when Giacometti was very young, masterpieces from the Surrealist period, masterpieces from wartime, masterpieces from after the war, masterpieces from the late period.’
Hundreds of works from the collection will be displayed, many of which have never been available to the public before. Stay tuned for more updates on the museum opening.
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