Pompidou Centre to open first Asian branch in South Korea

Paris' Centre Pompidou is to open its first outpost in Asia next year – an exhibition space in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

Denis Berthomier, Executive Director of the Centre Pompidou, this week advised The Korea Herald “the Centre Pompidou has been for several months in negotiations with a Korean partner, Mr. Sounjou Seo, to open a branch in Seoul for five years, possibly renewable.”

Seo is aiming to open the venue in downtown Seoul with the financial sponsorship of a Korean company.

Seo has organised a number of exhibitions of masterpieces by 19th and 20th century artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Amedeo Modigliani in Seoul over the past decade. He boasts an extensive network with European and American museums and art collectors who loan their works for Seoul exhibitions.

The Centre Pompidou Seoul will launch as a temporary exhibition space under a five-year contract, which both Berthomier and Seo said will be renewable.

Seo stated “the Centre Pompidou finds that the dynamic economic and cultural prospects of Korea is in line with its vision as a vibrant multicultural space.

“The Centre Pompidou Seoul will be a cultural space for the public that exists to spread the power of culture.”

The Centre Pompidou Seoul will be its first branch centre in Asia, and its second outside of France having opened a ‘pop-up museum in the Spanish city of Malaga in March 2015.

The plan for the Pompidou Center‘s expansion overseas was first announced by Serge Lasvignes, President of the Pompidou Centre, last year in his interview with a French magazine, according to the Art Newspaper.

The Centre Georges Pompidou (known as the Pompidou Centre in English) is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris which houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Public Information Library), a vast public library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research.

Opened in 1977, it was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini.

Its art collection includes works by Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.

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