Palais de Tokyo New Face
After 10 month of reconstruction and marking its 10th anniversary, Palais de Tokyo, one of the most representative contemporary art institutions in Paris has reopened its doors to public. The museum has substantially expanded its exhibition space, incorporating the previously unused basement floor and finally acquiring a full-fledged status of the largest contemporary art space in Europe.
Initially built for the World's Fair 1937, Palais de Tokyo is located next door to the Paris Museum of Modern Art. Formerly used as France's state film school and archive, then closed almost throughout the second half of the 20th century, the building was reopened as Palais de Tokyo in 2002. It provoked sharp controversy right away with its seemingly weird design, featuring nude, unfinished concrete interior surfaces, its passion for avant-garde art and its strange working hours - every day from noon till midnight. From the very start, Palais de Tokyo focused its attention on art exhibitions that justly could be tagged as experimental ones, with particular interest in artworks of younger generation artists.
In its current new shape, Palais de Tokyo has elevated its industrial roughness and the state of incompleteness to yet unprecedented level, exposing ceiling crossbeams, tangles of wires, dust-covered columns and partly painted concrete walls and floors. A magnificent installation as if crushes down from the lobby ceiling. The entire design of the museum seems declaring that the place is in a never ceasing process of change and development, like a blank sheet of paper, offering a perfect background for the craziest ideas imaginable, without any restrictions.
Palais de Tokyo plans to show five large exhibitions per year with a variety of smaller projects, concerts and theatre performances to take place alongside. The museum is intended to serve as a platform for mainly younger generation French artists, yet affording its exhibition space to international artists as well.
Palais de Tokyo still houses the legendary art and design bookstore Whiteblock, one of the best of its kind in Paris, which now has considerably expanded, too. Aside from the already popular restaurant Le Tokyo Eat, the museum plans on opening a new gourmet restaurant overlooking the Seine River in mid-September.
13, avenue du President - Wilson 75016, Paris
04/2012
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