Fondation Cartier Opens a New Chapter with “Exposition Générale” in Paris

At 2 Place du Palais Royal, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain begins a bold new era. Its inaugural exhibition, “Exposition Générale,” curated by Béatrice Grenier, the Fondation’s Strategic and International Projects Director, with contributions from Collection Director Grazia Quaroni, reimagines the very act of exhibition-making within Jean Nouvel’s radical architectural transformation of the former Louvre des Antiquaires.

Opening on October 25, and on view through August 2026, the exhibition draws inspiration from the building’s layered past—from grand magasin to cultural landmark—and celebrates 40 years of the Fondation’s experimental spirit. Through nearly 600 works spanning generations and geographies, “Exposition Générale” positions the museum not as a static archive, but as an evolving site of exchange, curiosity, and renewal. Whitewall spoke to Grenier and Quaroni, the co-curators of the inaugural exhibition.

Translating a Layered History into a Curatorial Concept

WHITEWALL: The exhibition draws inspiration from the building’s layered history—from grand hotel, to department store, to antique marketplace. How did you translate this rich past into the curatorial concept?

BÉATRICE GRENIER: For the new exhibition spaces of the Fondation Cartier, Jean Nouvel has completely transformed 2 Place du Palais Royal, the former Louvre des Antiquaires, which for most of its history was the Grands Magasins du Louvre. It was important for the inaugural exhibition to bring together three fundamental elements of the Fondation Cartier’s new project—the museographic innovation designed by Jean Nouvel, the preservation it entailed by restoring original impetus of the architecture and Haussmanian principles, and finally connect the latter with the Fondation Cartier’s cultural program.

The new musicographic device designed by Jean Nouvel is a system of 5 moveable platforms that can be adjusted to different heights. This is a museographic revolution as it implicates that the museum is metaphorically always on unstable ground. Instead of designing fixed galleries that succeed one another in a static sequence, the Fondation Cartier proposes that the center of the museum is the very act of exhibition making. Instead of placing the notion of collecting at the center of the narrative of the institution, we posit that exhibition-making, and therefore the history of ideas vs. the history of property, is the center of the institution’s program. The Fondation Cartier has built its collection through commissioning artists in its exhibition program and “Exposition Générale” evokes the milestones of its program in this institutional portrait, collapsing exhibition making with collecting.

The Spirit of Accessibility and the Building’s History

WW: The title “Exposition Générale” nods to the grand magasins’ democratic approach to display. How does this spirit of accessibility influence the Fondation Cartier’s vision in its new home?

BG: Indeed! The title, “Exposition Générale,” refers to the exhibitions that were organized by the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store starting in the late 19th century, in this very Haussmannian building that the Fondation Cartier now occupies, originally built for the first Parisian Exposition Universelle in 1855. These commercial sales were in many ways social gatherings, which in retrospect contributed to the emerging figure of the city dweller, the flaneur. In these original “Exposition Générales,” all kinds of goods newly in circulation in the city—domestic technologies, home goods, textiles and fashion—were displayed together in a very dense fashion and freedom of categorization. Today the catalogues of sale records of these events are in the collection of the Palais Galleria: altogether they clearly show a record of a cultural and popular history that unfolded in these department stores at so many levels. From graphic design all the way to display devices.

The modern department store, and indeed as art historians we do not like to admit it, were architectural-social catalysts that broadened the urban cultural field and heralded a new era for the circulation of knowledge. We wanted “Exposition Générale” to highlight this important period of the building’s history in referencing these sales. The design of the exhibition, conceived by Formafantasma, references the material history of display systems that were used in these department store exhibitions, reactivating their social and experimental nature and exploring their influence in the evolution of museological practices. This means that we aim on the one hand side for a form of density and generosity, and on the other, allowing ourselves to make rapprochements which are usually not permissible.

For example: Formafantasma designed an octagonal tower wrapped in textile to allow a monumental backdrop for the exhibition of a series of drawings by members of the Guarani and Nivaclé indigenous communities, artists from the Gran Chaco forest in northern Paraguay. Nearby an installation of a model by world-renowned architect Junya Ishigami can be appreciated in the same frame. Finally, we played with visibility of the exhibition spaces from the street, by curating the selection of some works which address themselves to an audience which isn’t inside the museum yet. In a similar manner to the former department store, the exhibition begins outside, on the sidewalk. Both the historical “Exposition Générale” as well as our own contemporary version or remix expound the coexistence of diversity of media, the blurring of classification, the multiplicity of geographies and provenances, the collapse of beaux-arts hierarchies—this too is the very spirit of the Fondation Cartier!

Revisiting the Exposition Universelle

WW: The project situates itself in dialogue with the Exposition Universelle’s mix of innovation, spectacle, and cultural exchange. How do you see this historical reference resonating with contemporary exhibition-making?

BG: It was a deliberate choice to bring to the foreground the influence of the Exposition Universelle on the development of the modern experience of the shop and store as well as the museum (one must remember that South Kensington was founded at the outset of the first ever organized world expo in London’s Crystal Palace). Art history has been too shy about this. The inaugural exhibition of the Fondation Cartier, “Exposition Générale,” is precisely a mise en abyme of the crucial historical moment of the intertwined fate of the Exposition Universelle, the Grands Magasins du Louvre, and the museum, which anonymously unfolded within the walls of 2, Place du Palais-Royal. Indeed, the Exposition Universelle created a new relationship between city, architecture, museum, and exhibition device which crystallized in the birth of the phenomenon of the grands magasins, the new nucleus for the experimentation of modern urban life.

With the Parisian “expositions universelles” of 1855 and 1867, new urban infrastructure was built all over the city to expose the technical and agricultural innovation of the nation, in addition to industrial and fine art from all around the world. This was the crowning of the French capital’s transformation into a modern metropolis, an urban dream that made of the city and its experience an immense vitrine, both site and showcase of modernization, to be visited by city dwellers and tourists alike. Paris awoke metamorphosed from this great event and subsequent iterations, as a city that hoped for more inventions, discoveries, and greater curiosity towards the technology of its time. We precisely hope that “Exposition Générale” will reawaken the ambition of the exhibition as a critical laboratory and renewed relationship with urbanization and popular culture.

The Exhibition in the Digital Age

WW: The 19th-century grands magasins pioneered exhibition as an urban experience. In a digital age, how does “Exposition Générale” reimagine the exhibition as a site of discovery and collective wonder?

BG: Museums should be present in the digital space in a prominent way just as they are symbolically physically in a city—in a space like the Fondation Cartier at 2 Place du Palais Royal. “Exposition Générale” is celebrating the possibility of the coexistence of diversity of contents on a same platform, which is precisely what the digital enables.

“‘Exposition Générale’ is celebrating the possibility of the coexistence of diversity of contents on a same platform,”

Béatrice Grenier

Museums have invented, since the mid-17th century, a really specific form of experiencing culture in three-dimensional space. If we think about it, an exhibition is putting into one space objects that potentially have no relationship with one another and are creating connections across space and time. Imagine if we curated with as much care, voice, individuality, and generosity our online spaces, where we now spend most our time… We would be so much more knowledgeable! “Exposition Générale” reminds us density and diversity of content is necessary, and the critical power of exhibition-making makes legible our contemporary world.

The Next 40 Years of the Fondation Cartier

WW: The Fondation Cartier has long favored commissioning works over building a traditional collection. How does this exhibition set the tone for what’s to come—the next 40 years of the Fondation Cartier?

BG: The next forty years will be full of innovation, change and disruption and unexpected cross-pollination of culture! We are living in exciting times where culture is in constant motion and our planet is more connected than ever. The Fondation will continue to be in close contact with the most engaged artists of all disciplines to offer through our exhibition program as well as our collecting activities a strong engagement and dialogue with a variety of disciplines, not only what we usually think of as art but also science and technology, architecture, and new media.

“The next forty years will be full of innovation, change and disruption and unexpected cross-pollination of culture!”

Béatrice Grenier

In “Exposition Générale,” we are showing, in the four chapters of our exhibition, the nucleus of our program—its interest in design and architecture, science and technology, craft and ecology, and the natural world—including the sociological, cultural, and anthropological ramifications of the evolving climate crisis. We will also be working on bringing to our audiences and to the broader global cultural conversation questions and themes that do not necessarily or traditionally make it to the museum, in the most accessible and creative ways. This is the continued mandate of the Fondation globally.

WW: What experience do you want to be sure viewers walk away with?

BG: I hope that visitors, new and returning, walk away with the image of a renewed mandate of the Fondation Cartier, which intends, across from the Louvre, at the hyper historical center of Paris, to contribute to a global cultural ecosystem, and with every exhibition offer alternative ideas through the very speculation of exhibition-making of what the museum can be in its most contemporary form.

Shaping a Living Collection

WW: Nearly six hundred works from over one hundred artists are presented in “Exposition Générale.” What guided your selection process in balancing emblematic works with rediscoveries?

GRAZIA QUARONI: Despite the 4500 works we have in total in the collection, I think it is less about making a selection than organizing the works in the spaces to highlight what are the main lines of programming in 40 years building the collection.

To highlight some ensembles of works which are particularly significant in the exhibition and sometimes to really focus on one single work: for example, French painter Jean-Michel Alberola invites the visitor to extend the lateral vision through the building, Sarah Sze will be the counterpoint of the exhibition with an immersive installation engineered around the most basic scientific tools, like the pendulum. This is the way “Exposition Générale” is organized. In the space we had to create an environment for each of them to be together and this was revealing unexpected aspects of the works.

For example, Bolivian Aymara architect Freddy Mamani reenacted his Salon de Eventos presented at FC back in 2018, in a totally different version adapted to the new space. You can see it from many angles in this building configuration. The idea that you can see the spaces and all the levels together gives a lot of potential to each work. But we also try to make an effort to give each work, each artist, an autonomous reading inside the exhibition, so that you can really be alone with one artist or one work in every point of the space. So this is very important to respect the autonomy of each work and to have it readable. So more than a selection, this exhibition is a kind of flower that has been blooming little by little while discovering the spaces and while linking stories through different moments of programming in the history of our institution. And none of the works has been left alone; they all belong to the same great artistic experience.

Re-exhibiting a Living Collection

WW: The Fondation Cartier’s collection is built through commissions and collaborations. How does this way of collecting alter the way the works are understood when placed in dialogue decades later?

GQ: I wouldn’t talk about an alteration, but of course every time a work is re-exhibited in a new context, it’s enriched by what’s going on around it. There is a kind of universality that brings the works through different moments of history and continues to talk. But sometimes a work of art is the result of a complex research with many partners involved—these are the works more clearly linked with science or social sciences, for example.

Then we have to work with the artists again and again: the immersive installation Exit (2008–2025) by Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an image of our planet and of the migrant patterns all over the world based on the philosopher Paul Virilio’s observations. It is a work of art you have to take care of, to update it for each season of its life or whenever it’s exhibited, allowing it to continuously be in touch with reality. Another example: the sound archives by artist and bio-acoustician Bernie Krause are also part of our collection. In collaboration with SoundwalkCollective, he worked out the installation Night Would Not Be Night Without the Cricket(2025), conveying an impression of the state of nature today through sounds that he recorded in various forests all over the world.

Consciousness around such topics increased in the last 20–30 years. Fondation Cartier already started to bring them to attention years back, with exhibitions such as Comme un oiseau (1996), Être Nature (1998), or Un Monde réel (1999). This allows the public to meet these works today with even more awareness. These artworks are ready to go through the evolution of mentalities in culture, politics, and society.

New Discoveries

WW: Which lesser-known artists or works in this exhibition are you most excited for audiences to encounter?

GQ: It is always difficult to answer this kind of question, but of course my thoughts go to the one who is, I think, the youngest of the exhibition. His name is Santidio Pereira. Born in 1996, he’s from northeast Brazil, a region where the climate is very arid, with high temperatures and very little rain all year. Rather than focusing on the bareness of his native land’s soil, the artist emphasizes its vegetation as the central pattern of his work, celebrating the different types of rain and the transformation of flora according to the seasons.

“These artworks are ready to go through the evolution of mentalities in culture, politics, and society,”

Grazia Quaroni

There are also artists like Solange Pessoa, who is not a little-known artist, but her work has rarely been on view in France and she deserves real visibility. We’re going to highlight her presence in the show with one of our collection’s most recent acquisitions. It’s the beginning of a story we would like to start and continue with her.

Also, let me remind that MAHKU (Movimiento dos Artistas Huni-Kuï), shown in Fondation Cartier since 2013, stayed confidential for a long time and became worldwide well-known after its participation in the Venice Biennial (2024). We are very happy about this.

Intersections of Art, Science, and Nature

WW: The Fondation Cartier has often brought art into dialogue with science, ecology, and technology. How are those threads carried forward in “Exposition Générale”?

GQ: This has been really the most important challenge during the 40 years of programming, and it is very valuable today. Architecture, science, science fiction, the forest, nature, and the environment—as well as making things, emphasizing the excellence of hand gestures and traditional techniques—are the threads that reveal the relationships between the works themselves in each part of the exhibition. They are really intertwined, and the Jean Nouvel architecture allows this—these connections between worlds that seem so different. These artworks all together bring a kind of portrait of the world we are living in right now through a global research, thinking about the future in art as well as in society and science.

WW: So looking ahead, what new opportunities do you see for international collaborations or expanding the collection’s global reach?

GQ: Well, let’s say that I see opportunities everywhere to enrich the collection and to enlarge these discussions, but I think that this exhibition is a good starting point to see what’s missing, what should be more curated, and which directions we should take through which subjects. The world is in constant evolution. There is a very strong history of Fondation Cartier, which is extremely important and which is very present in this exhibition. But then there is a new chapter of Fondation Cartier’s story. It is evident that this exhibition is a good starting point to continue the collection and the programming through global thinking again. In linking all the activities of the Fondation Cartier—not only the exhibitions, but also all the conversations, the talks, and all the scientific tools we’re going to put together to guide our future programming—we aim to create a real network.

“I see opportunities everywhere to enrich the collection and to enlarge these discussions,”

Grazia Quaroni