On October 25, 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain will open its new headquarters, located at 2 Place du Palais-Royal in the heart of Paris, to the public with the opening exhibition General Exhibition, built entirely around its prestigious Collection.
The new Fondation Cartier headquarters occupies the Haussmann-style building that once housed the Grands Magasins du Louvre. The architectural design, signed by Jean Nouvel, transforms the space into a place that is completely open to the city thanks to large glass surfaces and an innovative structure composed of five movable platforms, which offer endless possibilities for display. In this harmonious dialogue between historical memory and contemporary vision, the new architecture fits into the Parisian urban landscape as a natural extension of its history.
The inaugural exhibition, which can be visited until the end of August 2026, will feature nearly 600 works by more than 100 artists who have helped define the identity of Fondation Cartier since 1984. Through this exhibition, the institution chronicles four decades of international contemporary artistic creation, highlighting the richness and diversity of its Collection. TheGeneral Exhibition aims to celebrate the specificity of a unique collection, built over time through the exhibitions and projects that have marked its history. The works on display trace the Fondation Cartier’s main areas of research-architecture, nature and living worlds, science and technology-through iconic pieces and fragments of exhibitions that have marked the institution’s evolution.
Articulated around four thematic cores that span the entire Collection, theGeneral Exhibition showcases the variety of artistic engagements cultivated over time by the Fondation Cartier. The itinerary opens with Machines of Architecture, a true architectural laboratory in which models, drawings, fragments and installations dialogue with the urban landscape, revealing a multiplicity of visions and critical readings of contemporary architecture. These forms, which compose a kind of reinvented city, are joined by Being Nature’s Living Worlds, a section that invites reflection on the role of institutions in protecting threatened ecosystems and overcoming a purely anthropocentric perspective. The exhibition continues with Making Things, dedicated to creation as a place for experimentation and dialogue between disciplines, where contaminations between art, craft and design generate new languages and renewed modes of expression. The path concludes with A Real World, which brings together artistic practices capable of interweaving technology, fiction and scientific knowledge, outlining alternative visions of our way of inhabiting and understanding the world. Alongside the four main themes, the exhibition also presents focuses and installations dedicated to individual artists in the Collection, illustrating their personal trajectories or most significant collaborations.
Interweaving human and nonhuman forms and cultures, techniques and practices liberated from the traditional hierarchy of fine arts, theGeneral Exhibition proposes a new map of contemporary creation. An alternative to the classical museum encyclopedia, redefining the museum as a public space for experimentation, dialogue and knowledge generation.
The title of the exhibition draws inspiration from the “General Exhibitions” of objects and clothes that were once held in the very Grands Magasins du Louvre. These events, which originated in parallel with the Universal Exhibitions-the first of which, in 1855, coincided with the construction of the building during Baron Haussmann’s transformation work-represented places of sociality and discovery, where a new vision of material culture and progress was offered. The building itself is thus a symbol of Parisian modernity, which the Fondation Cartier today brings into dialogue with its Collection. Reviving the spirit of openness and sharing that characterized the historic “Expositions Généraux,” the exhibition presents itself as a public space for experimentation, encounter and exchange, in the heart of the city.
To celebrate the opening of the new venue, Fondation Cartier invites the public to visit the spaces and the inaugural exhibition free of charge during the first two days of opening, offering everyone the opportunity to discover some of the most significant works from its Collection.
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| Paris, Fondation Cartier opens its new headquarters with a major exhibition on its Collection |
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