Centre Pompidou Opens a Storage and Conservation Home South of Paris

The Centre Pompidou is moving much of its art into a new building in Massy, a town in the southern suburbs of Paris. The site, called Centre Pompidou Francilien – fabrique de l'art, is due to open in spring 2027, with its official inauguration in March, according to The Art Newspaper.

The main Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum in central Paris, is closing for renovations until 2030. Its collection is spread across eight rented spaces at the moment. Over the next two years, 645 trucks will carry the works to Massy.

The new building is a three-storey rectangle covering 30,000 square metres, roughly the area of four football pitches. Most of that space is behind the scenes. About 13,000 square metres is storage, and 4,000 square metres holds conservation and restoration workshops, where staff clean, repair and prepare works. None of that part is open to the public.

Visitors will get about 3,000 square metres, including 2,200 square metres of exhibition space. The site will also host exhibitions and artist residencies. Storage is spread over 20 large areas. Big sculptures and installations sit on the ground floor, and lighter works are kept on the first and second floors.

The building was designed by the architect Philippe Chiambaretta and his Paris firm, PCA-STREAM. Its front uses Douglas fir wood and looks out over a lake and a park. A public entrance leads to the exhibition spaces and to a rooftop terrace called the Belvédère, which will display artworks. An outdoor escalator on the outside of the building echoes the one at the main Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Alexia Fabre is the director of the Massy site. The Centre Pompidou loans around 6,000 works a year to museums around the world, and the new location is close to Orly airport, which makes shipping easier.

Preview weekends are running now, and visitors can see the building before it opens. The weekends fall on 17–18 October, 24–25 October and 31 October to 1 November 2026. Entry is free and open to all, but the Centre Pompidou strongly recommends booking a place in advance.

For anyone who has ever wondered where a museum keeps the works it is not showing, the answer is often a warehouse. This project puts that work in public view, with a room to see the conservators at their benches. The collection itself, about 150,000 modern and contemporary works, is owned by the French State and cared for by the Musée national d'art moderne, which is based at the Paris site.