The Centre Pompidou will close for a period of 5 years from autumn 2025 for renovation. To mark the occasion, it has given carte blanche to the multi-hatted artist Wolfgang Tillmans, who travels mainly between London and Berlin. To mark the occasion, he has taken over the 6,000 m² of the Bibliothèque’s Level 2 to create a dialogue between his photography and installation work, in a setting of sophisticated architecture. You can visit the exhibition “Rien ne nous préparait – Tout nous y préparait” until September 22, 2025.
Nothing prepared us for the closure of the Centre Pompidou, and yet! Beaubourg will indeed close its doors in autumn 2025 for 5 years of renovation to remove asbestos, ensure fire safety, optimize energy consumption and improve the building as a whole. During this time, its collection will be distributed among Paris’s major cultural players, including the Louvre, Quai Branly, Palais de Tokyo and Centre Pompidou-Metz.
In the meantime, he continues to provide culture-hungry visitors with exhibitions that bear his trademark, an eternal guarantee of quality. The latest is by German photographer and conceptual artist Wolfgang Tillmans, who has devised an original exhibition to round off the Centre Pompidou’s programming.
This retrospective exhibition highlights a prolific body of work spanning over 35 years, exploring several photographic genres such as portraiture, still life, architecture, documentary and abstraction, brought together in an installation that plays with the structure of the venue, making it unclassifiable. Moving-image works, music and texts by other artists complete the performance.
Through his work, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans explores the transformation of media and new information supports, proposing a new way of making images, shaping a singular aesthetic universe born of the counter-culture of the early 90s.
The wide-ranging selection on display covers almost all of his work, from his archives to his most recent creations, creating a chronological frieze of major social events since 1989, from the freedoms once conceded to social progress, to new ways of forming community, via changes in the expression of popular culture or modes of disseminating information. Wolgang Tillmans sings his last lullaby at the Centre Pompidou before a long 5-year sleep, and believe us, you won’t want to miss this unique event. More info and ticket link here.
