Bourse du Commerce: The Pinault foundation awaits its opening

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The François Pinault Foundation, hosted by the Bourse du Commerce, is one of the most eagerly awaited Parisian inaugurations of the year. Rehabilitated by the Breton billionaire, the opening to the public initially planned for January 23rd is once again – Covid obliges – postponed. Focus on an exceptional restoration.

Initially scheduled for 2020 and postponed to January 23, 2021, because of the pandemic, the opening of the Bourse du Commerce will ultimately depend on the health context, and via its Twitter account last Monday, the Bourse de Commerce is armed with patience by tweeting: “Waiting for the green light“.

It should be remembered that the contemporary art gallery will open near the Halles district, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. It will be located in the historical building of the XIXth century, imagined by Henri Blondel, on the former site of a hotel of Queen Catherine de Medici, which became the Bourse du Commerce in 1889.

It housed the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, before becoming the property of the city of Paris in the years 2010.

The building was renovated and entrusted to the François Pinault Foundation for 50 years. And the entrepreneur didn’t have to look very far for his project manager: After a visit without any ulterior motive to Tadao Ando in 2016, the latter asked him straight away: “We currently have a project in the pipeline. Would you take care of its architectural design?“. The Japanese architect’s order was as disturbing as it was unexpected, and a few seconds later he was astonished to accept the challenge, reports the Express.

The Bourse du Commerce will thus allocate 3,000 square meters to the personal art collection of French billionaire François Pinault of more than 10,000 works of art, to which he has devoted himself for more than 20 years and which is opening to the public on the proposal of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

The exhibition will also include a 284-seat auditorium space for conferences, symposiums, screenings, and concerts, as well as a black box dedicated to the presentation of video installations, performances, and experiments.

A restaurant-café will also open its doors, La Halles aux grains, located on the third floor and offering a relentless view of the rotunda and its dome accompanied by a glass roof, emblematic of the Bourse du Commerce.

The restaurant, imagined by the NeM and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec agency, who designed the furniture for the Bourse du Commerce, will welcome the gastronomic chefs Michel and Sébastien Bras. “We were expecting an exciting story to live in Paris. It’s here,” confides Michel Bras.

While the date and theme of the opening exhibition are not yet known, everything is already set for the much-anticipated inauguration of the François Pinault Foundation at the Bourse du Commerce.