When a FRAC becomes a place, its original utopian and experimental dimension (a nomadic collection spread across the territory to make art accessible to the widest audiences) sparks experimental and innovative architectural solutions. This exhibition presents the process of creation of each of these buildings and projects the visitor into the «factory» of today’s architecture.
The winners of these competitions are all confirmed architects on the international scene: in Bordeaux, the Danish BIG team associated with Freaks, in Rennes the agency Odile Decq Benoît Cornette, in Orléans Jakob+MacFarlane, in Besançon and Marseille the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma & Associates and in Dunkerque Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal. Exposing these six projects at the Centre Pompidou is an account of the formal and material creativity of the architectures by retracing the design phases, from the sketches to the construction sites.
The FRAC was created in 1982 at the initiative of Jack Lang, Minister of Culture and Communication, now President of the Association pour le développement du Centre Pompidou, in partnership with the regions. Their foundation reflects a great institutional creativity and the desire to democratize and decentralize contemporary art. For thirty years, the twenty-three FRAC have fulfilled the missions entrusted to them by the State and the Regions but also by other local authorities: collecting the art of their time, give it to be seen by going to meet the public through numerous actions outside the walls, make it the pedagogy to promote access to contemporary art.
In three decades, the 23 FRAC collections have brought together 26,000 works acquired from 4,200 artists, both French and international. Originally designed without a dedicated location, with an experimental vocation, many of the FRAC have settled, since the mid-1990s, in spaces that quickly became cramped. In order to preserve, present and disseminate these ever-changing international collections, a step had to be taken and new capacities had to be created. The Pays-de-la-Loire FRAC inaugurated this development in 2000. Thirty years after their creation, faithful to the spirit of the FRAC, new structures are being erected in the city, with the responsibility of innovating, in order to give a better view of the works as close as possible to the public, in order to disseminate today’s leading collections. Six of the 23 regions, with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Communication and other local authorities, have embarked on a new adventure by choosing to build equipment designed for their action, in Aquitaine, Brittany, in the Centre region, Franche-Comté, Nord-Pas de Calais and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. The diversity of the projects shows that different architectural solutions respond to identical missions and functions.
Co-produced by the Centre Pompidou and Platform (Regroupement des Fonds régionaux d'art contemporain) and designed as a travelling exhibition, this exhibition will then be presented at the FRAC Bretagne in Rennes at the end of 2012, then at the Arc en Rêve architectural centre in Bordeaux and at the FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in Marseille in autumn 2013.
This exhibition is the first of the events organized by the FRAC on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of their creation which will give rise, in 2013, to other events in all regions, under the triple sign of contemporary creation, proximity and experimentation.
Exhibition co-produced by the Centre Pompidou and Platform, Regroupement des Fonds régionaux d'art contemporain.
With the support of the Ministry of Culture and Communication (Direction générale de la création artistique).
With the assistance of all the Regions of France, the Association of Regions of France (ARF), the local authorities partners of the FRAC as well as the Regional Directorates of Cultural Affairs.