Art World
Brussels to Open Centre Pompidou Satellite by 2020
The museum's latest outpost will be homed in a former Citroën garage.
The museum's latest outpost will be homed in a former Citroën garage.
Lorena Muñoz-Alonso ShareShare This Article
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 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.