Iconic Contemporary Art Museum Reopens at the Palais-Royal in Paris
After thirty years behind glass walls on Boulevard Raspail, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain has moved into one of central Paris’s most storied buildings. Its new home, at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, opened to the public in October 2025. A major architectural and cultural event that redefines how the foundation presents art.
From Jean Nouvel’s Garden Pavilion to a Historic Palace
The Fondation Cartier was long associated with its transparent, tree-lined building in the 14th arrondissement. Designed by Jean Nouvel and inaugurated in 1994, that site became emblematic of how architecture could interact with nature.
Visitors walked through a glass façade that reflected the surrounding garden, a calm refuge from the bustle of Montparnasse.
The move to Palais-Royal represents a complete change of scale and context. The new building, also reimagined by Nouvel, occupies part of the former Grands Magasins du Louvre, later converted into the Louvre des Antiquaires, a 19th-century commercial palace built for the 1855 Exposition Universelle.
The foundation has taken over three floors of this massive stone structure, creating 8,500 square meters of space, almost twice the exhibition area of the old site.
Architecture That Moves
Nouvel’s new design respects the historic shell but radically rethinks the interior. At the heart of the building lies a monumental hall equipped with five mobile platforms that can rise or lower on hydraulic columns.
Each level can transform into a gallery, stage, or suspended walkway, letting curators change the entire layout from one show to the next!
The upper floors retain the building’s original iron columns and arched windows. Glass ceilings flood the space with daylight, while lighting systems adapt to each artwork’s needs.
Visitors see traces of the former department store including wooden banisters, cast-iron details, alongside the sleek engineering of a 21st-century museum.
For Nouvel, the goal was to create a flexible, living organism rather than a static museum. “A structure that can breathe,” he told Le Monde – one that allows artists to shape their own environment.
“Exposition Générale”: 40 Years in Motion
The new building opened with Exposition Générale, a show running from October 25 2025 to August 23 2026. It serves both as a retrospective and a statement of intent, gathering 4,500 works from 500 artists representing over 60 countries.
Instead of chronological order, the exhibition unfolds through four thematic constellations:
Machines d’Architecture: architectural models and visionary urban designs explore how buildings shape society – including pieces by Bodys Isek Kingelez, Andrea Branzi, and Junya Ishigami.
Être Nature: works engaging with ecology and the non-human world, from Olga de Amaral’s woven gold textiles to large-scale botanical installations by Luiz Zerbini.
Making Things: a focus on craft and materials, with ceramics, glass, and textile art reconsidered through a contemporary lens.
Un Monde Réel: art that examines science, fiction, and technology, including digital projections and experimental films.
The exhibition design, by Italian studio Formafantasma, uses modular textile walls and aluminum frames that shift depending on the platform configuration.
As visitors move between floors, the perspectives change: sculptures appear, disappear, and re-emerge from new angles. Pretty cool.
Extending Into the City
One section of Exposition Générale continues outside the foundation. In the Galerie Valois, a passageway beneath the Palais-Royal, drawings and architectural studies by Andrea Branzi connect the exhibition to the street – true to the foundation’s tradition of dissolving barriers between art and daily life.
This approach builds on past collaborations with artists such as David Lynch, Guillermo Kuitca, and Sarah Sze, who have blurred the line between museum and public space.
A Cultural Triangle
The move places the foundation in the geographic heart of Paris’s museum landscape. Step outside its doors and you’re surrounded by landmarks: the Louvre, the Comédie-Française, and the Tuileries Gardens lie within minutes.
The Palais-Royal’s arcades house cafés and bookstores that once drew Colette and Jean Cocteau.
For visitors, the central location transforms the experience. You can pair a morning at the Fondation Cartier with an afternoon at the Louvre or the Palais Garnier without crossing the city.
It also positions contemporary art within reach of travelers who previously might have skipped the Montparnasse site altogether.
Visiting Information
The Fondation Cartier at Place du Palais-Royal is open Tuesday to Sunday 11 a.m. – 8 p.m., with late hours until 10 p.m. on Tuesdays. Admission is €15 (reduced €10). Tickets are available online on the site.
The nearest metro stations are Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre (lines 1 and 7) and Pyramides (lines 7 and 14). The main entrance faces the square, opposite the gardens of the Palais-Royal.