Magnate ditches museum plan

French billionaire Francois Pinault has abandoned plans to give Paris a contemporary art museum on an island in the Seine and will house his collection in a Venetian palace instead, he said Monday.

Pinault, France’s second richest man and a longtime art collector, hired Japanese architect Tadao Ando to build an art foundation on the site of the derelict Renault car factory on Paris’ Ile Seguin. But after repeated delays, the retail magnate said he was ditching those plans and had acquired Venice’s Palazzo Grassi -- once owned by Gianni Agnelli, the deceased patriarch of Italian capitalism -- to show his artworks.