Paris gets Giacometti Museum – NRC

Paris will have a museum that will be entirely dedicated to the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. From 2026, the museum will be located in the former train station Gare des Invalides. This new Giacometti Museum will also house the Fondation Giacometti, the foundation that manages most of the artist’s estate. This enormous collection, which, in addition to sculptures and paintings, also includes photographs and archive documents, has until now been kept in a depot.

“Giacometti kept an edition of each sculpture himself,” Catherine Grenier, director of the foundation, told Artnet News. “Giacometti’s widow Annette kept everything she inherited from her husband, but she didn’t have enough money to rent a room for it.” When Grenier became director of the foundation in 2014, she made finding a location for a museum a priority. In 2018, the Giacometti Institute opened in the Montparnasse district, where the artist lived and worked for a long time. The reconstruction of Giacometti’s studio that was on display there will soon be moved to the new museum.

Orangery

Gare des Invalides was the headquarters of Air France until last summer. Thanks to financial support from the French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel, the former train station can be converted into a museum. Designed in 1900 for the World’s Fair in the style of an orangery, the building has beautiful natural light. In addition to the permanent collection, there will also be temporary exhibitions featuring works by Giacometti’s contemporaries.

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