On the banks of the Huangpu River in Xuhui District, Shanghai, the long-awaited West Bund Museum will be opened on November 8. "Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Project" was the first collaboration between Chinese and French art exchanges from 2019 to 2024 and also the first cooperation project of expansion of the Centre Pompidou in Asia. The content of the cooperation project, the West Bund Museum will host three permanent exhibitions of not less than 18 months and 10 special exhibitions for half a year in the next five years, while at the Centre Pompidou in France, will exhibit contemporary works from China.
West Bund Group builds the “West Bund Culture Corridor” along the Huangpu River, including the Shanghai Dream Center, the Long Museum, the YUZ Museum, and the Shanghai Center for Photography. The West Bund Museum has located a triangular block at the northern, located at the junction of Longteng Avenue and the river. The architecture of the West Bund Museum was created by the team of British architect David Chipperfield. It took 3 years and covers an area of about 22,000 square meters. The building consists of three subjects and forms a long triangular appearance, reflecting the Huangpu River. The center of the three buildings is a two-story atrium hall. The entire museum has four exhibition halls, entertainment spaces, like the bookstore, coffee shop, restaurant and educational space, like the studio, children's workshop.
Opening of the West Bund Museum host from November 6th to November 17th, with 60 exciting events including dance, music, performances, talks and installations. The opening also includes permanent exhibitions and special exhibitions. The permanent exhibition "THE SHAPE OF TIME - HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU COLLECTION VOL.I" exhibit in gallery 2 and gallery 3 of the West Bund Museum, from November 8th this year to May 9th, 2021. "THE SHAPE OF TIME - HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU COLLECTION VOL.I" was curated by Marcella Lista, which divided the exhibition into 11 chapters, presenting more than a hundred visual artworks from the 20th to the 21st century with time as a concept, including Robert Delaunay's "La Ville" De Paris, Wassily Kandinsky's "Gelb-Rot-Blau", Constantin Brancusi "La Muse endormie", etc. There are also presenting artworks from famous artists like Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró and from Chinese artists like Zao Wou-Ki, Zhang Huan, Ding Yi, Cai Guo-Qiang, Li Yongbin.
The special exhibition " OBSERVATIONS —HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU NEW MEDIA COLLECTION" exhibit in gallery 1 of the West Bund Museum from November 8th, 2019 to March 29th, 2020. "OBSERVATIONS -HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU NEW MEDIA COLLECTION" is also curated by Marcella Lista, head of the New Media Department, Musée national d'art moderne, who selected 15 artists` Works from the New Media Department collection exhibited: Peter Campus, Claude Closky, Cui Xiuwen, Rineke Dijkstra, Harun Farocki, Dan Graham, Mona Hatoum, Ryoji Ikeda, Joan Jonas, Thierry KUNTZEL, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Hito Steyerl, Zhang Peili, Zhou Tao.
The special exhibition tells the cultural evolution of "observation" in a retrospective way. Telling the influence of new media on art, humans from the observation of things through the eyes to the advancement of technology that know how to use telescopes, microscopes, cameras and other observation tools, these change the way people think and express in artistic creation. The exhibition also pointed out the evolution of hardware equipment, ubiquitous photographic equipment, invasion and spying on everyone's life, and derived a perverted social environment, and proposed and criticized the topic of "intimacy in public places".
The permanent exhibition
"THE SHAPE OF TIME - HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU COLLECTION VOL.I"
Date: 8 November 2019 – 9 May 2021
Venue: The West Bund Museum Shanghai, Gallery 2, Gallery 3
The special exhibition
" OBSERVATIONS — HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU NEW MEDIA COLLECTION"
Date: 8 November 2019 – 29 March 2020
Venue: The West Bund Museum Shanghai, Gallery 1
Figure 1：Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum, Shanghai © DR
Figure 2 top left：Constantin Brancusi, La Muse endormie [Sleeping Muse], 1910, Polished bronze © Centre Pompidou
Figure 2 top right：Vasily Kandinsky, Gelb-Rot-Blau [Yellow-Red-Blue], 1925, Oil on canvas © Centre Pompidou
Figure 2 left middle：Fernand Léger, Le Pont du remorqueur [The Deck of the Tugboat], 1920, Oil on canvas © Centre Pompidou
Figure 2 right middle：Robert Delaunay, La Ville de Paris [The City of Paris], 1910–12, Oil on canvas © Centre Pompidou
Figure 2 left bottom：Piet Mondrian (Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, known as), Composition en rouge, bleu et blanc II [Composition in Red, Blue and White II], 1937, Oil on canvas © Centre Pompidou
Figure 2 bottom middle：Constantin Brancusi, Le Baiser [The Kiss], 1923–25, Stone (brown limestone) © Centre Pompidou
Figure 2 right bottom：Jackson Pollock, Painting (Silver over Black, White, Yellow and Red), 1948, Painting on paper, mounted on canvas © Centre Pompidou
