Carré d'art

Carré d'Art is a cultural center in Nîmes, southern France, housing a museum of contemporary art and the city's multimedia municipal library. Inaugurated in May 1993, the institution was conceived as a provincial counterpart to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, combining a public reading facility with contemporary art exhibition spaces. Situated on the city's historic forum directly opposite the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple from the early first century AD, the complex creates a striking dialogue between classical antiquity and modern architecture. The museum holds a collection of approximately 500 to 600 works dating from 1960 to the present and serves as a key link in the network of contemporary art museums across the Mediterranean region.

The site of Carré d'Art was originally occupied by a neoclassical theater built between 1798 and 1800, which was destroyed by arson in October 1952, leaving only its colonnaded stone facade. In 1983, the newly elected mayor of Nîmes, Jean Bousquet, initiated a project to transform the city into a cultural hub, with a new contemporary art museum as its centerpiece. An international architectural competition was launched in 1984, inviting twelve architects including Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, César Pelli, and Arata Isozaki. The British architect Norman Foster won the commission. Foster proposed several designs integrating or omitting the old theater facade, and the jury ultimately selected the version without the historic colonnade. Despite public protests, the facade was dismantled and reconstructed at the Caissargues highway rest area. The collector Robert Calle was appointed in 1985 to assemble the permanent collection, beginning acquisitions in 1986 with substantial state backing. Catastrophic flooding in 1988 devastated the site and delayed construction, but also prompted Foster to redesign the surrounding square, removing cars to rehabilitate the area. The building officially opened on May 9, 1993.

Launched in 1986, the museum's collection encompasses approximately 500 to 600 items covering art from 1960 to the present. The collection is built around three primary focuses: a panorama of French art, a Mediterranean identity rooted in southern France, Spain, and Italy, and a presentation of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic trends. Its foundational core emphasizes movements that originated in the south of France, notably Nouveau Réalisme, Supports/Surfaces, and Figuration Libre. The museum's own acquisitions are supplemented by loans from the FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon and the Fonds national d'art contemporain. The collection is renewed annually, allowing for rotating displays and in-depth approaches to major artistic movements.

Arte Povera is particularly well represented in the permanent collection, with works by Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Alighiero Boetti, and Giovanni Anselmo. American art is showcased through pieces by Richard Artschwager, Allan Kaprow, Joseph Kosuth, and Christopher Wool. A dedicated section of German painting includes works by Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Albert Oehlen, alongside installations by Thomas Schütte. French creative art is featured through photographic works and installations by Sophie Calle, Annette Messager, and Suzanne Lafont. Recent acquisitions and loans include pieces by Walid Raad, Ryan Gander, Philippe Parreno, and Taryn Simon. Specific highlighted works in the collection include Claude Viallat's Taud de bateau (1986), Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild (1989), Ugo Rondinone's Sunrise East, October (2005), Dahn Vo's We the People - Détail E8 (2011), and Anna Boghiguian's Mapping the ear (2011-2014).

Designed by Norman Foster, the Carré d'Art is a nine-story structure constructed of glass, concrete, and steel. Facing the Maison Carrée, the building presents a fully transparent glass parallelepiped with slender steel pillars that echo the column motif of the Roman temple. To respect the low scale of the surrounding historic buildings, half of the structure is sunk deep into the ground, housing archival storage and a cinema on the lower levels. A central atrium, inspired by the inner courtyards of traditional houses in Nîmes, features a skylight that floods the interior with natural light. The contemporary art museum occupies the upper two floors, while the library and media library fill the intermediate levels. The energetic logic of a glass cube in a Mediterranean climate has been subject to debate among critics.

Carré d'Art is located on the Place de la Maison Carrée in the historic center of Nîmes. The museum is recognized as a Musée de France. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and on Sunday from 10:00 AM to 6:30 PM, remaining closed on Mondays. General admission is 8 euros, with a reduced rate of 6 euros. Entry is free for visitors under 18 and for all visitors on the first Sunday of the month. The museum regularly hosts temporary exhibitions of international stature on its second floor, and the institution functions as a daily civic space for local residents, integrating the library and museum into the city's public life.