Article
French Billionaire’s Art Collection to Go On Show in Paris
Published: Thu 15 Aug 2013 at 11:21
Updated: Thu 15 Aug 2013 at 11:22
French investor François Pinault is set to lend a number of pieces of art to Paris’ Conciergerie.
It has been confirmed that Pinault will provide around 50 works to be showcased. The upcoming exhibition is being promoted as the first show in France to feature work from the billionaire’s extensive collection.
Back in 2005, Pinault – who is the founder of multinational luxury goods and retail company PPR, now called Kering – abandoned plans to construct a private museum to the southwest of Paris, which would have housed his large collection. Shortly after, some pieces were displayed at Venice’s Palazzo Grassi building.
A Famous Building
Now, tourists opting for cheap flights to Paris and the surrounding regions can see the collection for the first time in France.
Scheduled to run from 21st October until 6th January, the exhibition – titled ‘À Triple Tour’ – will include work from a number of famous artists, including Damien Hirst, Boris Mikhailov, Bill Viola, Chen Zhen and Mona Hatoum. It will occupy around 16,000 sq ft of gallery space.
In keeping with the history of the Conciergerie – which formerly served as a royal palace and was the building where Marie Antoinette was famously jailed – the exhibition’s resonating theme will be imprisonment. This is according to the government body managing state-owned historical buildings, the Centre des monuments nationaux.
Many of the works in the collection have never before appeared in an exhibition. Cheap flights to Paris and elsewhere are available from Jet2.com, enabling art enthusiasts to take advantage of this unique cultural opportunity.
