2016 exhibitions

Sublime
The tremors of the world
February 11–September 5, 2016

The exhibition explores our mixed feelings of attraction and repulsion when we face the furies of Nature and the ambivalent fascination that the elements exert on us. Bringing together 100 international artists, it questions the renewal of interest in the notion of the “sublime” in a contemporary context and presents the continuous use of its iconography.

The exhibition also shows how this relentlessness has profoundly changed our relationship with nature. Whilst the romantic period seems to privilege an introspective movement, investigating the human soul, the contemporary period is characterised more by a particular kind of political awareness, a watchful focus on the climate and an urgent need for testimony.

Curator: Hélène Guenin, Centre Pompidou-Metz
 

Kawamata—Under the water
February 11–August 15, 2016

Made of used wood and furniture, the installation Under the water by Tadashi Kawamata is a recollection of the tsunami that strongly hit Japan in March 2011. The artist has conceived of his structure as a motionless and deadly wave, in a reference to all those bits of broken wood carried along by the receding tsunami, which saturated the ocean surface. The calm conveyed by the work, the attention paid to the rhythm of this swaying weft, create paradoxically a moment of meditation.
 

Musicircus
April 20, 2016–August 2017

Following the long-term exhibition Beacons highlighting masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou collection, Musicircus invites to reinterpret the history of modern and contemporary art through the prism of music.

The journey shows the importance of rhythm in the birth of abstraction, as well as the links between musicality and movement—of image, light, sculpture and bodies—in the experimentations of Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder and Yves Klein. With Claes Oldenburg and Sol LeWitt, the exhibition evokes the relation between serialism and minimalism.

Hosting concerts and performances, the Great Nave becomes a musicbox, reminding of the collective work Musicircus created by John Cage in 1967.

Curators: Emma Lavigne and Anne Horvath, Centre Pompidou-Metz
 

Between two horizons
French and german faces of modern art through the Saarlandmuseum collection
June 29, 2016–January 2017

In a genuine European spirit, the exhibition generates dialogue between the French and German artistic scenes since Impressionism. From Auguste Renoir to Max Liebermann, from André Derain to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, including Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky and Hans Hartung, the exhibition tells a moment of art and a moment of history in the artists’ look.

Further to this approach, the exhibition highlights the history of a museum and of its collections. Since 1952, great works by French Impressionists and Expressionists of Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) have entered the collection; it was enlarged in the 1980s with German Impressionist canvases, thanks to the Kohl-Weigand collection.

Curators: Kathrin Elvers-Svamberk and Dr Roland Mönig, Saarlandmuseum; Alexandra Müller, Centre Pompidou-Metz
 

An Imagined Museum
Three European collections: Centre Pompidou, Tate, MMK
October 21, 2016–March 27, 2017

Alluding to the banishment of art and culture throughout history explored in dystopian sci-fi literature (such as Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451), the exhibition presents a future scenario in which all of the works of art on display are about to disappear. To preserve them, artworks are required to be memorised, offering to audiences the possibility to embody and personify their relation to art. The exhibition invites visitors to become familiar with works by artists including Marcel Duchamp, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol and Louise Bourgeois.

Curators: Francesco Manacorda, Darren Pih and Lauren Barnes, Tate Liverpool; Peter Gorschlüter, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main; Hélène Guenin and Alexandra Müller, Centre Pompidou-Metz


Still on view

Cosa mentale
Until March 28, 2016

Kimsooja – To Breathe
Until January 4, 2016

Beacons
Until February 15, 2016


Opening hours
April 1–October 31: Monday, Wednesday–Thursday 10am-6pm, Friday–Sunday 10am–7pm
November 1–March 31: Wednesday–Monday 10am–6pm
 

Only 85 minutes via high-speed train from Paris.