Update: Centre Pompidou x Jersey City is on hold “indefinitely,” the New Jersey Economic Development Authority said on June 29. Citing various issues, including the prolonged impact of the coronavirus pandemic as well as anticipated costs to state taxpayers, the agency said “the Legislature has rescinded financial support, leaving us to determine that this project is unfortunately no longer feasible.”
Nearly 50 years ago a museum opened in Paris. It was mocked by critics and locals. “A kind of architectural King Kong,” Le Monde jeered. Despite the skeptics it endured, and today the Centre Pompidou is a beloved fixture in the cultural firmament, home to the largest modern art collection in Europe and even the occasional fashion show.
Like many Parisians, it will be taking a break after an exhausting year for the city that will include hosting the summer Olympics—except the Pompidou’s sojourn won’t be in Biarritz or Brittany but in the state Tony Soprano called home. The Pompidou is coming to Jersey.
Over the past decade the museum has opened satellites in Málaga, Brussels, and Shanghai, and once the flagship closes in 2025 for a comprehensive five-year, $290 million renovation, these outposts will be critical for displaying its sprawling treasure trove of 100,000 works. (No official reopening date has been announced.)
The Centre Pompidou x Jersey City is expected to open in 2026 in a 58,000-square-foot building constructed in 1912 as part of a trolley station. It will be redesigned by the New York office of OMA, the firm founded by Rem Koolhaas, led by partner Jason Long.
Taken at face value, New Jersey, the oft heckled “armpit of America,” seems an odd choice for this symbol of Gallic pride, but it makes sense in light of the Pompidou’s history. Both factory-like and space age, the museum’s unusual multicolor steel truss exterior was initially met with great skepticism and derision when it opened, in 1977 in the Beaubourg district, near the Marais. Like New Jersey, the Pompidou was the butt of many jokes.
Designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers—who, in their thirties, unexpectedly won an open international design competition with a jury that included Jean Prouvé, Philip Johnson, and Oscar Niemeyer—the Pompidou’s flexible, open-plan, pipe-tube-and-duct-covered frame contains an astounding 1 million square feet of museum space on a five-acre plot. Each of the six floors is longer than a football field. Piano himself has said that 80 percent of the public “were dead set against us.”
“I never dared tell a taxi driver I was in any way responsible for the building,” he said. Some people likened the structure’s seemingly utilitarian form to a parking garage.
“Paris has its own monster,” Le Figaro declared, “just like Loch Ness.” In time Piano and Rogers had their revenge, and the Pompidou came to be seen as not only holding its own against older institutions like the Louvre but as a fun palace for all to enjoy. Perhaps the Jersey location too will eventually have the last laugh, serving as a not so improbable Satriale’s for the art world mafia.
This story appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Town & Country, with the headline "Jersey, Je t'aime." SUBSCRIBE NOW
A Town & Country contributing editor, Spencer Bailey writes about art, architecture, and design. He was the editor in chief of Surface magazine.
