San Francisco Frontiers - Pompidou museum invites public for last look before renovation

The museum, one of the world's biggest modern art spaces, will host a series of performances this weekend before its permanent collection is removed ahead of the renovation work.

From Monday, specialists will begin taking away the roughly 2,000 items on permanent display -- from paintings by Francis Bacon to the sculptures of Marcel Duchamp.

Temporary exhibitions will run until September, when the public will be shut out entirely for five years while a colossal overhaul, including asbestos removal, takes place.

"This colossal operation has taken months, even years, to prepare," production director Claire Garnier told AFP.

The museum is one the most visited in the French capital and a beloved landmark, designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers and opened in 1977.

It will be free for visitors to enter from Friday evening when Paris-based DJs Louise Chen and Busy P (Pedro Winter) are scheduled to play inside, with attendees invited to dress or create accessories inspired by the permanent collection.

The museum will remain open to the public free-of-charge over the weekend and until late on Monday evening, with music, dance and educational workshops scheduled to take place in different parts of the building.

- Distinctive features -

The museum's collection will now be spread across a number of museums in several countries, with its works lent as far afield as Malaga in Spain, the Chinese city of Shanghai, the Belgian capital Brussels and major museums in Australia, Japan and the United States.

From its opening in January 1977, the museum, named after France's former president Georges Pompidou, enjoyed extraordinary attendance figures, said Garnier.

Apart from the pandemic years, it has welcomed an average of four million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited sites in Paris.

The building's distinctive features, which include exposed multi-coloured tubes running inside and outside, were dreamed up by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers.

The state of Paris's often crowded cultural attractions hit the headlines in January when the head of the Louvre warned that the world's most-visited museum was suffering from water damage, poor maintenance and long queues.

President Emmanuel Macron visited afterwards to promise that it would be "redesigned, restored and enlarged" with a multi-year overhaul forecast to cost up to 800 million euros ($830 million).

The Pompidou museum's renovation work has a provisional budget of 262 million euros.

A.Clark--SFF