Pompidou Center Set for Major Overhaul

Its appalled critics found it had all the aesthetic appeal of a gasworks. But in its first 20 years, the once controversial Georges Pompidou Center has become one of the French capital’s most visited attractions.

And that’s the problem. Designed to host 7,000 visitors a day, the innovative art museum and cultural exposition center on the Right Bank absorbs 15,000 to 25,000. A total of 160 million people have trooped through the edifice that most Parisians call “Beaubourg.”

The Pompidou Center has been controversial, in part, because instead of a facade, it boldly shows its ventilation ducts, water pipes and other vital arteries to the world. To celebrate the center’s 20th birthday this January, the pipes got a fresh coat of paint.

But additional renovations are planned to bring the building up to contemporary safety standards, better channel the tide of visitors and provide more space for artworks acquired over the last two decades.

Starting Sept. 29, renovation work estimated to cost at least $80 million will be under way until midnight, Dec. 31, 1999. During that period, the Pompidou Center will ratchet back to less than 15,000 square feet of exposition space, less than a third of what is now available. The fifth-floor terrace, with a stunning view of the city, will remain open, as will the bookstore-boutique, the library and the information center.

Through Sept. 29, until the carpenters begin work, the Pompidou will feature an exposition titled “Made in France: 1947-1997” presenting postwar artistic creation in France in all its forms.