A Venice sneak peek into the new Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain by Jean Nouvel

A new home for Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain by Jean Nouvel will open later this year in Paris; in the meantime, the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 offered the perfect platform for a sneak preview of what's to come

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition in venice, installation views in moody lighting
(Image credit: Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Andrea Rossetti)

If you are missing the celebrated Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain home at Boulevard Raspail, then head to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, and the foundation's collateral event at Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the majestic Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. There, a sneak preview exhibition of what's to come at the next Jean Nouvel structure for Fondation Cartier, which is set to open later in the year, might quench your thirst until the public opening of the new structure on 25 October 2025.

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition in venice, installation views in moody lighting

(Image credit: Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Andrea Rossetti)

What's to come at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris

When it was announced that the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris is moving homes from its well-known, existing 1994-designed space on Boulevard Raspail by Jean Nouvel to a new building at the 19th-century Place du Palais-Royal, it took audiences by surprise. Not only because of the change itself, but also as the new home, also designed by Nouvel (in an existing historic building), promises an immersive, kinetic and fully 21st-century experience.

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition in venice, installation views in moody lighting

(Image credit: Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Andrea Rossetti)

'Moving into such an impressive site, in terms of location and history, entails a form of invention. And what is invented is not automatically seen in the steel or stone. The space is marked by a different way of doing: a way of conceiving how artists can have maximum power of expression,' Jean Nouvel told us at the time.

'A site such as this one calls for boldness, courage that artists might not necessarily demonstrate in other institutional spaces. The Fondation Cartier will likely be the institution offering the greatest differentiation of its spaces, the most diverse exhibition forms and viewpoints. Here, it is possible to do what cannot be done elsewhere, by shifting the system of the act of showing.'

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition in venice, installation views in moody lighting

(Image credit: Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Andrea Rossetti)

The new building will be inaugurated this coming autumn, and the newly opened show in Venice offers glimpses of what's to come, in the shape of large scale, immersive renders, photos and film; drawings providing detail into the construction and feel of different areas within the building, including its movable platforms and adaptable nature; and a generous model, arranged in a way that allows the visitor to walk in it and take in the building's interior and kinetic potential.

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition in venice, installation views in moody lighting

(Image credit: Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Andrea Rossetti)

The show, no doubt, will whet appetites to explore the new space once available; and in the meantime, inspire conversations around the future of art exhibitions, cultural architecture and cross-disciplinary creation. A public programme including participants such as Jean Nouvel, Cecilia Puga, Andrés Jaque, Lina Ghotmeh, Manuel Segade and Antoine Picon, will accompany the exhibition.

The exhibition 'The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain by Jean Nouvel' will be on show until 14 September 2025 on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).