MALAGA.- The first “Pop-Up Pompidou” opened to the public in Málaga, Andalusia, on March 28 2015. The “Centre Pompidou Málaga” will be staying for a minimum of five years in the Cubo, a cultural centre built on the city’s habour in 2013 and adapted to host the Pop-up Pompidou.

It will offer a very wide public a chance to experience the Centre Pompidou through its large and varied collection, its excellent programme, its mix of artistic disciplines and its innovative mediation programmes.

Málaga, Picasso’s native city, has made culture and museums the focus of a new era in its development. The city’s current dynamic thrust is based on the creation and establishment of top-quality cultural events and museums. Málaga possesses a wealth of cultural assets: the third largest offer in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona.

In Málaga, the Pop-Up Pompidou will provide a permanent circuit of several dozen works chosen from the Centre Pompidou’s incomparable collection, inviting audiences to a journey through the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. It will present two to three themed or monographic temporary exhibitions each year, devised by the Centre Pompidou’s curators and drawn from the various segments of the collection (including photography, design, architecture and video). The “Pompidou experience” will also take the form of multidisciplinary programmes devoted to dance, performance, the spoken word and cinema, and the aid provided by mediation set-ups, designed for younger audiences in particular.

The municipality of Málaga invited French artist Daniel Buren to create a temporary in situ installation entitled Incubé [Incubated]. Adorning the Cubo’s glass façade with coloured squares alternating with his “visual tools” composed of 8.7 cm wide stripes, the famous artist thus contributes to the visibility of the Centre Pompidou Málaga and hallmarks the cityscape with his world-renowned signature.

A strategic project initiated by Centre Pompidou President Alain Seban, Pop-up Pompidous are designed to display the Centre Pompidou collection, and more broadly, to create or consolidate new networks abroad, and attract new audiences in France and throughout the world.

This concept draws on all the experience, innovations and success of the Mobile Centre Pompidou: an experimental project which travelled around France between October 2011 and September 2013, attracting some 250,000 visitors. Pop-up Pompidous will further the cultural decentralisation initiative embodied in the Mobile Centre Pompidou, and become the spearhead of the institution’s international development.

They can be set up in existing museums, museographic or heritage venues as yet without a programme or currently being transformed, and also venues that are not dedicated to culture and are in the process of being re-qualified. Working hand-in-hand with local cultural networks, the Pop-up Pompidous will thus act as a leaven or a “cultural driving force”.

A MEANS OF FURTHER EXPANSION FOR THE CENTRE POMPIDOU
Outside France, Pop-up Pompidous will be the means for establishing new connections with emerging contemporary art scenes, thus furthering the development and influence of the Centre Pompidou collection – one of the world’s two largest in modern and contemporary art, with nearly 100,000 works.

They will help to consolidate the Centre Pompidou model by further highlighting its extraordinary collection, expertise and values. They will also foster more enduring relations than those permitted by classical temporary travelling exhibitions, by generating new resources in new territories of artistic globalisation.

In France, this open-minded, federative project aimed at decentralisation will reach out to audiences through a close partnership with local authorities, cultural players and associations. Cities wishing to host a Pop-up Pompidou will soon be able to apply. The Centre Pompidou will thus be able to share the nation’s rich modern and contemporary art collections and implement its mission of public service throughout France, reflecting the ambition of the Ministery of Culture and Communication, for the national collections to be enjoyed by an ever-wider audience.