Art World
Brussels to Open Centre Pompidou Satellite by 2020
The museum's latest outpost will be homed in a former Citroën garage.
![Pompidou Center President Serge Lasvignes (right) and Brussels region President Rudi Vervoordt shake hands as they unveil a project to transform a former Citroen car garage in Brussels into a museum for modern and contemporary art, at the on September 29, 2016. Photo Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images. Pompidou Center President Serge Lasvignes (right) and Brussels region President Rudi Vervoordt shake hands as they unveil a project to transform a former Citroen car garage in Brussels into a museum for modern and contemporary art, at the on September 29, 2016. Photo Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.](https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2016/09/Pompidou-Brussels-1024x671.jpg)
The museum's latest outpost will be homed in a former Citroën garage.
Lorena Muñoz-Alonso
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Brussels is set to get its own Centre Pompidou. The partnership was announced yesterday at a press conference held in the European capital, by the Pompidou director, Serge Lasvignes, and the Minister-President of the Brussels region, Rudi Vervoort.
The satellite will be homed at a former Citroën garage, a 16,000 square-meter Art Nouveau building located on the banks of the city’s canal, northwest of the center, AFP reports.
The former Citroen garage that will turned into a museum for modern and contemporary art in Brussels. Photo Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.
The project is the long-held dream of the regional government of Brussels, which bought the building back in 2015 for €20.5 million ($23.0 million) with the idea of using it to host a first-class museum which could trigger a Guggenheim effect in the city.
In the end, it’s the Centre Pompidou—which has a growing portfolio of outposts, including satellites in Metz, France, and Málaga, Spain—that has secured the deal.
According to a joint press release quoted by the Art Newspaper, the new museum (which doesn’t have an official name yet) could bring between €2.4 million to €4.8 million per year to Brussels, based on predictions of visitor figures, ranging from 500,000 to 1 million annually.
Although the museum is not slated to open until 2020, temporary exhibitions could start to be staged as early as 2018.
La région bruxelloise et le @CentrePompidou signent un protocole pour la création d'un #CentrePompidouBruxelles au sein d'un pôle culturel pic.twitter.com/XZhWB2o8Eg
— Centre Pompidou (@CentrePompidou) September 29, 2016
The Centre Pompidou will loan works from its 120,000-strong collection (the largest of modern and contemporary art in Europe, according to TAN) to its Brussels outpost, as well as advising on its acquisition strategy and collaborating on programming.