French connection: The Pompidou Centre expands to Málaga

Barely had the paint dried on the two 7-storey urban art interventions recently created in Málaga by none other than Shepard Fairey, aka Obey, and D*Face, aka Dean Stockton… than the capital of the Costa del Sol is making art news around the globe yet again. This time with last Friday’s announcement by Málaga mayor, Franciso de la Torre, that an agreement has been reached whereby Paris’s prestigious Pompidou Centre will be opening an annex at the iconic ‘Cube’ situated alongside the cruise ship terminal in Málaga Port in 2015…

The elevated crystal Cube, stands atop a 6,000 square metre (currently empty) space and is located in the new Muelle Uno district of town which houses several designer boutiques and swish eateries, including the Michelin-starred José Carlos García Restaurante.

The initial agreement – which runs for five years and will be renewable – will cost Málaga city hall €5m upfront and thereafter €1m annually. The Cube will showcase a permanent collection of around 70 works of art selected from the Pompidou Centre, as well as featuring a once-yearly temporary exhibition previously shown in Paris.

With 76,000 works of art, and 6 million visitors a year, the Pompidou Centre is one of the world’s three largest and most influential of modern and contemporary art museums – the other two of course being London’s Tate Modern and New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Award-winning architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers effectively, and controversially, designed Paris’s Pompidou Centre inside out, with all its pipes, air vents, plumbing and electrical cables forming part of the external façade, cleverly freeing up the interior space for exhibitions.

The Málaga annex will be the Pompidou Centre’s very first venture outside France since its inauguration in 1977, so “bien fait” to the capital of the Costa de Sol’s city hall for successfully pulling off a project they’ve been working on for the last five years!