Paris
Negotiations led by Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the former director of the Palace of Versailles, have secured a major exhibition that will feature works from the collection of the French billionaire François Pinault. The show, entitled “A Triple Tour” (21 October-6 January 2014), is due to open in Paris this autumn.
Around 50 works by 22 artists will go on show in the Conciergerie, a Medieval building on the Ile de la Cité in the river Seine. According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, Aillagon acted as a go-between, bringing together Pinault and officials at the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, the French government body that runs the Conciergerie.
Imprisonment theme
Pinault abandoned plans to build his own gallery on another island in the French capital—the Ile Seguin—in 2005. He blamed French bureaucracy for the delays and opted instead to show his art at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice.
Aillagon, an advisor to Pinault, was the first director of the Palazzo Grassi’s gallery when it opened in 2006. He is now the president of Les Arts Décoratifs, the governing body of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.
Marie-Antoinette was incarcerated at the Conciergerie during the French Revolution, and the show will, in part, explore the issue of imprisonment through works by Diana Thater, Julie Mehretu, Allora & Calzadilla and Llyn Foulkes. The show’s opening week will coincide with Fiac (24-27 October), the Modern and contemporary art fair.