West Bund Art & Design. Photo West Bund Art & Design.

The Centre Pompidou is planning to open a branch of the museum in Shanghai. Although there is no set opening date for the project, the Shanghai iteration is reportedly due to be installed in the West Bund Art Museum, a project that is itself still underway.

Slated to open in around three years, the David Chipperfield-designed West Bund Museum is due to be built in the West Bund cultural area of Shanghai. The project is part of a huge redevelopment project by the Xuhui Province which, when completed, will form a “cultural corridor” according to The Art Newspaper.

For an annual fee of $1.6 million paid to the Pompidou, the museum will display works from the collection of the Parisian institution, in addition to exhibiting contemporary Chinese art, according to Shanghai Daily.

It has long been the ambition of the Centre Pompidou to branch out internationally, specifically in China. In 2007 the then-director of the Pompidou, Bruno Racine, planned to open a museum in Huaihai Park in Shanghai, but negotiations with Chinese authorities broke down, according to TAN.

The French museum opened a branch in Málaga, Spain, in 2015, that displays works from their collection—an exchange for which the Pompidou receives €1 million ($1,079,760) per year.

The strategy of opening international branches was announced by previous head Alain Seban and has been put into practice by current president Serge Lasvignes.

In 2016, the Pompidou staged an exhibition of works, “Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou 1906-77”, at the Shanghai Exhibition Center which featured works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Marcel Duchamp.

artnet News reached out to the Pompidou for comment but at time of publishing is yet to receive any comment.


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