Pompidou Center in Paris. Georges Pompidou National Center for Arts and Culture in Paris, France

In 1977, a new attraction appeared in Paris - a center of culture and art, studying contemporary art in all its forms - dance, plastic arts, painting, sculpture, etc. Despite its young age, the center quickly gained popularity among both Parisians and visitors to the city. Today this center, named after the French President Georges Pompidou, is one of the most visited places in the French capital (only the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower are visited more often).

In 1969, President Pompidou decided to build a multifaceted cultural center in the Beaubourg quarter, which is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The center was supposed to give a new impetus to the development of previous cultural projects that were never fully realized. They included such ambitious ideas as building the largest public library in France, as well as rehabilitating the national museum of modern art, which was suffering from an acute shortage of resources and huddled in the side wing of the Tokyo Palace.

In addition to the public library and the relocation of the Museum of Contemporary Art, it was planned that the new center would unite other areas of contemporary art research. The Center for Research on Contemporary Musical Creativity was headed by Pierre Boulet, who had left France a few years earlier in protest against the state of contemporary music. Another department of the new cultural center was engaged in arts and crafts, François Matei took over its leadership.

When the French government announced a competition for the best architectural project, 681 applicants from 49 countries applied for participation in it. The winner of the competition was the Italian Renzo Piano and the Englishman Richard Rogers. The innovative project proposed by them involved the placement of most of the engineering structures (escalators, elevators, pipelines, etc.) outside the building, which made it possible to use the internal area of ​​the building as efficiently as possible. The architects also offered to paint each type of communication in a different color. All electrical wiring was painted yellow, elevators and escalators - red, water and ventilation pipes - blue and green.

The grand opening of the center took place on January 31, 1977. Despite the protests of some critics who compared the center to an oil refinery, the architectural innovation was very well received by the Parisians.

In addition to the permanent exhibition, specialized exhibitions were held annually in the center, thanks to which its popularity grew rapidly. During the first 20 years of operation, the center received over 150 million visitors, so its reconstruction was required. It was decided to expand the exposition area by arranging the external territory, and in 1997-1999 the area of ​​the center increased to 100,000 square meters. Some organizational changes were also carried out, the cinematographic direction, the conversational genre and live shows of contemporary performers entered the scope of the center.

On January 1, 2000, the renovated Pompidou Center opened its doors to the general public, and again it was a stunning success. In 2000, the center received an average of about 16,000 visitors daily.

What to visit in the Pompidou Center

This is the largest European collection of its kind, with more than 60,000 artefacts spread over 40 exhibition halls. Painting and graphics, sculpture and architecture coexist here with design elements and installations. The earliest exhibits of the museum date back to 1905. Every year, the exposition is replenished with the latest works of art. The upper level of the museum (5th floor of the Center Pompidou) is devoted to the period 1905-1960, the floor below exhibits works dating from the period from 1960 to the present day.

The upper level of the museum introduces us to such art movements as cubism, fauvism, surrealism, expressionism, etc. Here you can see masterpieces of the late Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Malevich, Chagall, projects of architectural buildings made in the Bauhaus and Functionalist styles, as well as sculptural compositions. The lower floor of the exposition is dedicated to such areas as new realism, pop art, and experimental art.

Today, in order to remain a museum of contemporary art, and to overcome competition with new, avant-garde exhibitions opening in Paris, the Pompidou Center is constantly updating its collection. For example, in 2015 it was replenished with paintings by Salvador Dali, Andre Breton and Raoul Hausmann.

As the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection grows every year, the possibility of transferring part of the collection to the Tokyo Palace in the west of Paris is currently being considered.

It is better to plan your visit to the museum in advance. The tour in English is only available once a week - on Saturdays. However, you can visit private excursions with a Russian guide by signing up in advance.

Minors can visit the museum free of charge every first Sunday of the month. For those who visit Paris often, there is an annual subscription. The museum's day off is Tuesday. The purchase of a combined ticket will give you the opportunity to visit not only the permanent exhibition, but also temporary exhibitions.

Spaces for temporary exhibitions are located on Level 1 South Mezzanine, as well as in the Grande Galerie on Level 6. On average, these premises host 25 exhibitions per year. Each of them invariably becomes the brightest event of world culture.

Since temporary exhibitions are designed to reflect contemporary art even more than the main fund of the museum, the curators approach the formation of the program with all responsibility. During the year, you can visit both thematic exhibitions (dedicated to one or another direction in art), and personal exhibitions of the most advanced creators of our time. Artists such as Yves Klein and Nan Goldin exhibited here.

As well as the permanent exhibition of the museum, the exhibitions cover various branches of art - painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, contemporary arts and crafts, design elements and much more.

Public Information Library (BPI)

Two floors of the Pompidou Center are reserved for the Public Information Library (Bibliothèque publique d'information). Books, periodicals, films and other types of information are stored here in all possible media, including the most modern technologies. The book stock of the library is 350,000 volumes. Also here you can see a collection of 24,000 titles of periodicals, 2,000 films, a large number of voice and music recordings, maps and plans, as well as foreign television channels - and this is not a complete list of information stored in the library. Scientific seminars, discussions, creative meetings and film screenings are held on the basis of BPI.

The main principles and mission of the library are to ensure maximum availability of up-to-date information for everyone, active participation in the cultural life of the country, cooperation with other cultural institutions to create a single information and research center. Following its tasks, the library annually updates not only its funds, but also its technical base, giving visitors more opportunities to access information. For example, there are language laboratories where you can conduct foreign language classes. It should be noted that the reading rooms are equipped with special equipment for the blind and visually impaired.

The main contingent of BPI visitors are Parisian students. 2,200 reading places and 370 places for working with multimedia sources cannot always accommodate everyone, especially since admission to the library is completely free. Therefore, it is better to come here in the late afternoon, after 18.00.

Two cinema halls of the Pompidou Center are located on its 2nd level. It regularly hosts retrospectives of films by the most iconic film directors of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as film screening programs thematically united by a certain period in the history of cinema, or various genres of modern cinema. Cinemas of the cultural center are the base for major film festivals.

The basement of the cultural center contains 4 theater venues. Of course, it is difficult to call it theater in the traditional sense of the word. It has no stages and curtains, stalls and an amphitheater. These are premises that meet the needs of a modern understanding of the performing arts, where a high-quality, relevant and fashionable theatrical product is produced. The brightest and most advanced directors, actors and set designers, such as Ludovic Lagarde and Pierre Leon, work here.

These venues host not only dramatic performances, but also dance performances, music concerts, non-traditional theatrical exhibitions, non-standard excursions, as well as conferences, seminars and discussions.

Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music (IRCAM)

IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) is part of the Georges Pompidou Cultural Center complex, but is located in a separate building on Stravinsky Square.

This is one of the world's largest public research centers, which considers music not only from an artistic, but also from a scientific point of view. Musical sensibility here coexists with the latest technology. The institute defines its activities in three main areas: creativity, research, broadcasting. Works created within the framework of IRCAM activities can be heard in the program of Paris concerts and musical performances in different countries of the world.

How to get there

Ticket price

• Adult: 14 €
• Reduced: 11 €

Center Pompidou (Paris, France) - expositions, opening hours, address, phone numbers, official website.

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Georges Pompidou National Center for Arts and Culture (fr. Center national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou) - popularly simply the Pompidou Center - is a cultural center located in Paris, in the Beaubourg quarter. The center was opened by order of President Georges Pompidou in 1977 with the aim of studying and supporting contemporary art of various directions (music, visual arts, dance and others). The complex includes the Museum of Modern Art, exhibition and concert halls, a rich library, as well as the Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music.

The Pompidou Center ranks third among the sights of Paris in terms of the number of visitors - after the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.

Georges Pompidou National Center for Art and Culture

History of the Pompidou Center

At the very beginning of his presidential term, Georges Pompidou set out to modernize the country, and such a course needed a bright and memorable symbol. Pompidou decided not to make loud statements, to give obviously unrealistic promises, but he acted much wiser - he decided to create an architectural object that will go down in history. He announced a competition for the most original project of the Museum of Contemporary Art, in which 681 works from 49 countries took part.

Most of all, the French liked the idea of ​​Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers - they proposed a building in which all communications and technical structures were placed outside the perimeter, due to which the maximum area was freed. The project was adopted unanimously, and at midnight on December 31, 1977, a solemn opening ceremony took place. Under the beat of the clock, the fabric was pulled off the building, and a real monster appeared before the eyes of the Parisians, frozen in anticipation - all elevators, escalators, pipelines and fittings were outside. Ventilation pipes were painted blue, plumbing pipes green, electrical wires yellow, and escalators and elevators red.

In the feature film "Two in Empty Paris", one of the characters called the Pompidou Center "an architectural mutant".

What and where is the Pompidou Center

The Pompidou Center attracts tourists from all over the world not only with its unusual appearance, but also with its internal content. On the first floor of the Center (there are five in total) there is a cinema, which often hosts film festivals, showings of the so-called art-house cinema.

The second and third floors are dedicated to a rich public library containing millions of books and video files, including literature in Russian. All books are available only for review in the reading room, you will not be able to take anything with you. There are screens for watching videos, as well as language phones for listening to audio. The third and fourth floors are occupied by the Museum of Modern Art, whose collection includes about 60 thousand works of art by more than five thousand authors. Such areas as painting, design, architecture, photography, installation, video and performance are presented. Relatively recently, an interesting exhibit appeared here - the original of one of the pages of the first comic strip about the adventures of Tintin. In addition to contemporaries, the museum contains works by great painters of the 20th century such as Matisse, Picasso and Kandinsky.

On the fifth floor of the Center is the Grande Galerie, which displays temporary exhibitions.

The indisputable advantage of the Pompidou Center is the availability of places where you can leave children, and they will not be bored either. There are art workshops for young visitors, where your child can get lessons in painting and clay modeling.

Once you've finished visiting the exhibitions, climb to the very top and you'll see Paris at a glance, from Montmartre Hill to Notre Dame Cathedral.

Practical information

Address: Place Georges Pompidou, Paris 4e.

How to get there: Take metro line 11 to Rambuteau station or lines 1 and 11 to Hotel de Ville station.

Opening hours: daily from 11:00 to 21:00 (December 24 and 31 - until 19:00), closed on Tuesdays and May 1.

Entrance: full fare - 14 EUR, preferential - 11 EUR, every first Sunday of the month - free of charge.

In 1969, French President Georges Pompidou proposed the idea of ​​opening a new cultural institute in Paris that would feature modern art collections.

It is now the largest art venue in Europe, where visitors can enjoy over 50,000 works and masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and Joan Miro. You must visit the Pompidou Center when you are in Paris, and study the art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, including the direction of Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The construction itself is an architectural masterpiece, which has all its internal amenities: an elevator, air conditioning and pipelines on the facade.

Pompidou Center in the capital of France

In 1971, competition for this new cultural center attracted over six hundred entries. The winning design by architects Gianfranco Franchini, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano won with the idea of ​​relocating functional elements such as air-conditioning escalators and plumbing outside the building to free up interior space for displaying works of art.

The process of building this glass structure almost in the very center of the city (Beaubur quarter) faced a huge amount of opposition. People did not appreciate the idea of ​​building an oil factory in the historic district of the city. But in the early winter of 1977, when the project officially opened, it was an instant success, attracting 5,000 visitors a day. Today, the Pompidou Center receives more than 25,000 people a day, making it one of the most visited places in the French capital.

Pompidou Center is perhaps the most famous museum of contemporary art. It also contains a very famous library, a bookstore, a panoramic balcony and a cinema. Its library boasts a collection of over 400,000 books, 2,500 magazines, and a vast array of new multimedia products.

The library is located on the first floors of the building, while the museum's sculptures and collections are located on the fourth and fifth floors. The upper and lower floors are designed for large expositions. The museum has one of the most important collections of current art. About 60 thousand of his works cover the period of art since the 20th century. The 4th floor covers the artistic movements of the 20th century such as Fauvism, Abstractionism, Surrealism and Cubism. Some of the artists on display there include Matisse, Miro and Pablo Picasso.

What to see in Pompidou

Exhibitions:

A lot of masterpieces that are spread over all floors of the Pompidou Center, where you can get acquainted with all the current trends in art. This place is definitely designed for art lovers with non-standard tastes. Most of the masterpieces are made from interactive videos and images, for printing and painting.

Stravinsky Fountain:

The Stravinsky Fountain is a non-standard fountain that is located between Saint-Merry (church) and the Pompidou Center. This unusual brightly colored fountain features 16 creations and sculptures, including free underground water. Created by sculptors Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle in 1983, this is arguably the most iconic of Parisian fountains and fits in perfectly with its location.

The library, which is located in the Pompidou Center, is divided into two parts. The first is a library of public information that is open to the public. The second focuses on research and documentation that relate to contemporary art. Both parts are a great place for those who want to order some research, or just look around for a huge collection of information.

Did you know?

• The tender for the best design for the building received more than 600 applications from architects.
• Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers were unknown before the opening of the Pompidou Center.
• Most French people are not thrilled with the design of the building. They draw analogies with a boiler house or an oil factory.
• Although the Center Pompidou is an art gallery, its two libraries occupy three floors of the building.

Main characteristics:

• 50 thousand masterpieces of art.
• Works by Pablo Picasso, Duchamp, Ernst and Joan Miro among many others.
• Photo exhibition, exhibition of works by Man Ray and Robert Doisneau.
• Incredible panorama of Paris from the top terrace on the second floor.

The opening hours of the Pompidou Center are from 11:00 to 22:00, every day except Tuesday.

The National Center for Art and Culture Georges Pompidou, also called Center Georges Pompidou, Center Pompidou, Center Beaubourg or simply Beaubourg, is a multicultural center in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, located between the Halles and Marais quarters).

• 14 euro
• 11 euros for persons 18-25 years old
• Free for under 18s
• Free on the first Sunday of every month
• Free from

: Rambuteau (line 11), Hôtel de Ville (lines 1 and 11), Châtelet (lines 1, 4, 7, 11 and 14)
: Châtelet Les Halles (lines A, B, D)
: 29, 38, 47, 75

The center was founded on the initiative of French President Georges Pompidou. His focus is contemporary art, plastic arts, design, books, music and cinema. The center was opened on January 31, 1977. To date, Beaubourg has one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in the world. The building, which is also an original work of modern architecture, houses a library and cinema halls, and temporary exhibitions are held. From the observation deck of the Center offers a panoramic view of Paris (with and Montmartre). The center building houses a restaurant and a cafe.

Opening hours of the Pompidou Center

Daily from 11.00 to 22.00 (closing of halls from 21.00).

On Wednesdays, the entrance to the halls with temporary exhibitions on level 6 is until 23.00.

Ticket offices close 1 hour before the museum closes.

Ticket price for the Pompidou Center

On the first Sunday of each month, admission to the museum, the observation deck and the children's gallery is free for everyone.

To the museum and to the observation deck for persons under 18 years of age, disabled people and persons accompanying them.

Ticket discounts are available to persons aged 18 to 25.

(Information as of 4.01.2018)

How to get to the Pompidou Center

The center is located on Place Georges Pompidou.

)
Underground: Rambuteau or Hotel de Ville rer: Chatelet-Les Halles
Working hours: from 11:00 to 21:00, closed on Tuesdays
Entrance: 12€, 9€ from 18 to 25 years old, under 18 years old free of charge.
Ticket only to the observation deck - 3 €.
Website: www.centrepompidou.fr

The Center Pompidou, located in the Beaubourg quarter of the fourth arrondissement of Paris between the famous old quarters of Les Halles and Marais, is undoubtedly considered the pearl of French modern art. Built in 1977, the Georges Pompidou National Center for Arts and Culture (this is the official name of the Georges Pompidou Center), which the surprised Parisians instantly dubbed Pompisaur and Beaubourg for its too original forms and designs, annually attracts millions of tourists from all over the world.

And the history of the creation of this complex, which looks like a multi-colored glass-metal space plant, is no less interesting than its appearance itself.

Georges Pompidou, the resident of France, already at the very beginning of his reign, decided to set a course for the complete modernization of France, and of course, his political program needed a clear symbol of modernization. Then the resourceful president announced a competition for the most original architectural design of the building of the Museum of Modern Art.

681 projects from 49 countries were submitted to the competition, of which the jury was most impressed by the innovative project of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. The authors proposed to move all technical structures outside the perimeter of the building and thereby free up the maximum usable area. The project was approved unanimously, and already on December 31, 1977, at midnight, the new museum was inaugurated.

By the time the fabrics hiding it were pulled off the building to the beat of the clock, a monster opened up to the surprised gaze of the Parisians, in which all pipelines, elevators, escalators and fittings were brought out. Water pipes were painted green, ventilation blue, electrical wiring yellow, and elevators and escalators red.

The people of Paris were shocked. This ultra unusual building did not look like a museum, even of modern art. Conservative Parisians did not want to put up with Pompisaurus spoiling the architectural ensemble of their exquisite city, and at first the most active citizens even staged pickets near the building. But after a few months of the museum, it has become a favorite place for tourists.

Parisians realized that the center of Georges Pompidou did not mutilate their city, but, on the contrary, added a modern zest to it, to which millions of tourists are drawn like a breath of fresh air.

But the center attracts tourists not only with its extravagant appearance.
Today, the Pompidou Center is 5 floors, two of which are almost entirely given over to the richest public library with millions of books, disks, video files and microfilms. There are more than 60 thousand volumes of dictionaries alone! There is also literature in Russian, although all this is available only within the Center - you cannot take anything home. There are also monitors for watching movies and language phones for listening to audio recordings - come and enjoy.

On the first floor of the Center there is a cinema - a venue for film festivals. On the fifth floor - the Grande Galerie - mainly temporary exhibitions are shown, and the third and fourth floors are occupied by the Museum of Modern Art.

The Center's collection includes almost 60,000 works by more than 5,000 authors. Absolutely all types of contemporary art are presented here: painting, sculpture, design, photography, architecture, video, performances and installations. And not so long ago, the first comic appeared here - the original of one of the pages of the story about Tintin, written by the artist Hergé in 1956.

Even if you are more than skeptical about non-standard types of art, do not deny yourself the pleasure of visiting the Pompidou Center - in addition to our contemporaries, the works of the great masters of the last century are exhibited here. Among them are Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Chagall...

Children will also find something to do: art workshops work for them, where your child can get dirty with paints or sculptural clay with enthusiasm.

And having risen on the escalator to the very top, you will see the whole of Paris - from Notre Dame Cathedral to Montmartre hill!

Separately, it is worth mentioning the indescribable atmosphere surrounding the Pompidou Center. Immediately after the opening, the Center began to attract the most progressive youth and intelligentsia, and artists, wandering circus performers, musicians and artists often gathered on the square in front of the center. International theater festivals are regularly held near the extravagant Stravinsky Fountain near the Center.