Paris' loss, Palazzo Grassi's gain

The French billionaire François Pinault has abandoned plans to build a E150 million ($191 million) contemporary art museum on the Ile Seguin in Paris. Instead, he has decided to make the 18th-century Palazzo Grassi in Venice, which he recently acquired, the home of his collection of some 2,000 modern and contemporary works of art. The move means that Paris loses out on what was being hailed as a French rival to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

The planned museum, a 33,000 square-metre building designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, was to have occupied a third of the 70-acre island, three miles downstream from the Eiffel Tower. Renault’s car factory on the site closed in 1992 and was demolished last year.

Mr Pinault, the owner of Christie’s among other things, is blaming the Boulogne-Billancourt local authority, the council responsible for the site, for the delay in building a museum for his foundation.

Posted by David on June 3, 2005 1:16 PM