Carré d’Art–Musée d’art contemporain

Designed by Norman Foster, Carré d’Art materializes the ambitious logic that gave the municipality of Nîmes a contemporary showcase in the field of both architecture and the visual arts. Begun in 1986, the museum collection includes over 600 items extending from 1960 to the present day. Its backbone is formed by the representation of movements that came into being in the south of France, such as New Realism, Support-Surface and Figuration Libre. The collection hangings are renewed every year, enabling an in-depth approach to such major artistic movements. Focusing on paintings, sculpture and to a lesser extent photography and video, it is rich enough to be able to address new issues in painting, and question the presence of the object or of private mythology in contemporary art.

The life of the museum is also organized around two annual exhibitions which have most notably enabled people in France to familiarize themselves with the works of artists as influential as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Giuseppe Penone, Rebecca Horn and Mario Merz, and more recently Latoya Ruby Frazier, Walid Raad, Wolfgang Tillmans. A Project Room area is also on the building’s second floor with a regular turnover of exhibits.