From May 10 to September 14, 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, the innovative design concepts imagined by Jean

Nouvel for its future spaces in the exhibition The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain by Jean Nouvel.

Since its creation in 1984, the Fondation Cartier has placed architecture at the heart of its programming

positing it as an enabler of interdisciplinary dialogue. Its historic building designed by Jean Nouvel and

inaugurated in 1994 on Boulevard Raspail, Paris, broke all conventions of exhibition making by its apparent immateriality as a glass and steel structure.

Thirty years later, the Fondation Cartier commissioned to Jean Nouvel the transformation of a mid-19th

century Haussmannian building, set to open late 2025 at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris, next to the Louvre.

Pushing the boundaries of architectural design, it embodies the Fondation’s mission to engage all forms

of contemporary creation.

In the exhibition presented at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, visitors encounter the premises of the new

architecture of the Fondation Cartier. A large-scale sectional model of the new spaces reveals the potential

of an architecture that is a dynamic exhibition-making tool. Five platforms which can be adjusted to different heights offer the possibility of creating multiple combinations of volumes, voids and spaces, altogether creating unprecedent imaginative potential for multidisciplinary programming.

The sensations and experience of the architectural landscape of the Fondation Cartier’s new address are

evoked within the exhibition space through a display including projections, 1:1 scale photographs, plans

and prototypes. The scenography demonstrates in particular the effects of the retractable ceilings that

temper natural light, as well as those of the mechanical guard rails which add or subtract possible perspectives on the immediate urban surroundings.