The Pompidou Centre, the world’s second biggest collection of modern arts, will open a franchised gallery in Shanghai from 2019 to 2024, marking the highest-standard cultural exchange project between China and France.

(West Bund Art Museum)

The gallery will host more than 20 exhibitions and events in the five years, presenting various cultural programs from Pompidou’s collections and from representative works of Chinese contemporary art. This cooperation will also resonate at the Pompidou Centre with the possibility to organize a number of projects displaying Chinese arts in Paris.

The Pompidou Centre will contribute its expertise and assistance to the project, and play an advisory role throughout the collaboration on matters including curating and art conservation, as well as public art education, for international outreach, according to the memorandum of understanding signed between the Pompidou Centre and the West Bund Group.

The West Bund Group will be the exclusive partner of the Pompidou Centre for cultural exchange programs in the Yangtze Delta Area, and its only long-term partner for highest-standard programs in China.

West Bund Art Museum, with an area of nearly 25,000 square meters, is being designed by British architect David Chipperfield. It is expected to be completed at the end of 2018 and it will become the venue for the franchised gallery.

The Pompidou Centre has been interacting closely with China since 2000. A series of exhibitions featuring modern Chinese arts were hosted at the center in Paris. The center also opened exhibitions in China. As early as 2006, intent for cooperation on the franchised gallery in Shanghai was unveiled, but the original plan never materialized. In 2005, the Pompidou Centre also expressed that it wanted to open a cultural center in Hong Kong, which also did not come through, the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post reported.