Centre Georges Pompidou

In this essay, I undertake an analysis of the first exhibition curated by Didi-Huberman, L’ Empreinte (Imprint), which took place in Centre Pompidou in 1997. In this project, the French philosopher and art historian intentionally bypassed the usual products of artmaking, instead choosing to focus on what is left alongside this process. The project in Centre Pompidou transferred the technique of imprinting into the context of art of the 20th-century, investigating the tactile transmission of form from one surface to another. I will examine how Didi-Huberman’s attempt was influenced by the notion of survivance of forms, formulated by Aby Warburg, and how it offers an alternative to traditional approaches to original/ copy issue.

This paper represents a critical engagement with Bernard Stiegler’s philosophical and prescriptive exposition of the condition of existence within current Western ‘hyper-industrial’ societies. I contend that Stiegler’s oeuvre is permeated by a complicity with capitalist distinctions, practices and forms of exploitation, as he restricts agency and the possibility for social transformation to the Western middle-class. The argument is developed thus. I proceed by offering the reader, through a Stieglerian approach, an illustration of the pharmacological dimensions and aporetic effects of the digital news media upon memory, work and proletarianisation. I then identify Stiegler’s prescriptions and motivations for a deproletarianised future as being shadowed his depoliticised outlook, as he seeks to oppose consumerism, leaving capitalist and colonial social relations untouched. Finally, I highlight the ethnocentricity and classism which permeate Stiegler’s work, impeding possibilities for emancipatory politics.

Close to its fortieth anniversary, the Pompidou
Centre, this (anti)monument at the heart
of Paris, also popularly known as Beaubourg,
has a distinctive trajectory in cinema. An
initial exploration of a selection of films in
which this unique cultural space appears suggests
the existence of a breaking point in this
trajectory, coinciding with the change of millennia
and the reopening of the Centre after
its renovation in the late 90s. Following an
examination of the building and its activity,
the article addresses its appearances in cinema
chronologically and thematically.

Please cite as: Susan Holden, "Possible Pompidous," AA Files, 70, 2015, 33-45. 33 When L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui announced the international competition for the plateau Beaubourg in October 1970 Georges Pompidou had been president of France for little more than a year. Coming to power in the wake of the civil unrest of May 68, one of his earliest decisions was to create a landmark building in the heart of Paris that would reassert the city's pre-eminence in arts and culture, as much as it tried to appease the very same rioters who had been barricading streets and throwing cobblestones at police cars. In the process he hoped to signal that he was a new kind of president, and to succeed where his predecessor, Charles de Gaulle, had failed. For De Gaulle had attempted several times to develop Beaubourg as part of a grand plan for the Marais quarter that envisioned the construction of a vast transport hub, hotels and a conference centre. But in deciding to treat Beaubourg as a separate project, Pompidou managed to successfully prise it from the political stalemate in which the larger scheme was mired. In this wrestling for control, he was also aided by the fact that the site was then conveniently available for immediate development, having been razed in the 1930s as part of the wholesale demolition of the îlots insalubres of central Paris -a prelude, of sorts, to the large-scale urban renewal that would transform the face of the city in the 30 years after the Second World War, the so-called trente glorieuses. The idea behind the Centre Beaubourg was that it would bring together different arts and disciplines, providing a home for both the Musée National d'Art Moderne (MNAM) and France's first open-access public information library. The cultural emphasis of the project was perhaps surprising, given France's postwar preoccupation with economic growth and technology-driven innovation -the supersonic Concorde jet was successfully tested in the year Pompidou came to poweras much as it also seemed to jar with the President's well-established reputation as a philistine. However, Pompidou recognised the political currency of the arts and culture. During the interwar years, the Popular Front had mounted campaigns for the democratisation of culture, and the impulse was sustained by the postwar movement to align the task of reconstruction with a unification of the arts under the abstract aesthetics of modernism. De Gaulle made these cultural trends an explicit agenda of the State by setting up the Ministry for Cultural Affairs in 1958. Out of this, at the initiative of its first Minister, André Malraux, came the regional Maisons de la Culture.

409 pages, 98 color illustrations and 97 ink drawings.
Available in paperback and hardback at Amazon. e-book at Peter Lang Publishing: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4331-3959-8

"Paris in Architecture, Literature and Art" is a student textbook and teacher manual in cultural studies that capitalizes on the little exposure liberal arts students have to architecture, and the widespread popularity of Paris across the curriculum. Designed for a college course in the humanities, the book is also suitable for a High School course or a study abroad program in Paris.

The student textbook focuses on Paris, which throughout history has been the stage and experimental ground for artists and intellectuals from all over the world, making it the crucible of western thoughts and consummate material for an interdisciplinary study. Each chapter presents a cultural movement such as the Gothic, classical, romantic and modern that are predominant in the Parisian landscape. The interdisciplinary approach promotes critical thinking, inspiring students to identify and translate esthetic concepts from one discipline to another, and explore, for instance, what impressionist literature or cubist architecture might be.

A major retrospective of Cuban painter Wifredo Lam (Sagua la Grande, 1902 – Paris, 1992) has just berthed at Tate Modern in London, weighing in at more than two hundred works and neatly splayed in chronological order across eleven rooms. After a season at both the Pompidou in Paris and Reina Sofía in Madrid, viewers may now step into this sprawling survey featuring Lam’s proclamation writ large on the wall: “My painting is an act of decolonization, not in a physical sense but in a mental one.” The oft-cited quote fires this curatorial endeavour, delving into the fringes of art history’s canon in a bid to weave more plural, or polycentric, histories of global modernism. This is in concurrence with the retrospectives of the Uruguayan modern artist Joaquín Torres-García at MoMA in New York, and the Portuguese modernist Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso at the Grand Palais in Paris. These institutional redresses are long overdue, and the political moment is ripe for critical reappraisal. In the wake of the postcolonial turn, a wave of revisionary scholarship has thrust Lam’s work into new relief: Lam is a poster boy for diasporic displacement, cross-cultural hybridity, and black cosmopolitanism in the early twentieth century.

Link: https://cubacounterpoints.com/archives/4636

Architecture seems often imbued with the notion of “gesture.” The term is mentioned in abundance both when architecture is seen as a discipline and when it is seen as a social practice. Arguments about it can be found in an artefact as well as in an act of design. In this context it may be revealed as an object to be claimed (i.e., a fetish), or stand for a trace or a carrier of meaning. Thus, in a wider scope, gesture may be discussed as a persistent – if not necessary – theme in the field’s culture.

This essay examines “gesture” as a mediator between society (including culture and power) and the practice of architecture. This will be discussed within the framework of the competition for the Centre Beaubourg (later known as Centre Georges Pompidou). The heated discourse revolving around the expression “le geste architectural,” including the proposal to design the building literally as an open hand and thereby as a gesture of offering, will be explored. We will thus show how “gesture” simultaneously creates a multifaceted existence: at once as a token of validity and a symbol of truth and beauty, as well as representing the very danger of banality. Furthermore, we will show how the Centre itself – to which was attributed the character of a feat – becomes a “political gesture” carrying the sperm that spawned the type of “heroic architecture” that is so distinctive to the Fifth Republic. Finally, we will revisit “gesture” as a token taking part in a conundrum where the modern ideal ends up substituting genuineness with genius; and we will see this binary relationship in connection to all the “gestures” we discuss in the case of the Centre Beaubourg.

On these premises we will propose that, before we ask to define “gesture” by its content, it is important to see it first and foremost for what it does; namely, that it acts as a nominator, and thereby as a mediator, and even a weaver, of the collective between architecture and society. This shift in perspective is critical, as it reveals that gesture plays a more dynamic role than any doctrine would like to have it. Ultimately, we hope to show that gesture can be seen as taking an integral part in the very fabric of architecture, instead of merely playjng a role in one of its many histories.

This essay is based on existing literature as well as original research conducted in the archives of the Centre Georges Pompidou – to which we extend our gratitude for the access.

Art et Liberté: Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris is the culmination of six years of research, initiated by guest curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. On display is a comprehensive exhibition about the Egyptian Art and Liberty group (A&L) – an eclectic group of artists, writers and intellectuals prominent in the 1930s and 1940s. Amina Diab reviews this exhibition, which brings together almost 300 artefacts relating to the group's work.

To kick the habit of conventional scholarship this article appeals to the affective draw of the archive via an imaginative pedestrian peregrination. It takes a walk through the uneasy spaces of Vito Acconci's 1972 work Anchors and listens to the dialogue of conflicting voices which still demand to be heard, forty years after their construction. It becomes unclear who is initiating the dialogue; the text is hard to read and perverse. The resulting disorientation of Anchors is matched by a later, larger, exhibition in Paris: Les Immatériaux, co-organised by French Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. Here the labyrinthine confusion of spaces, sounds, smells and sights acts out an excess of information, echoing the affective intensity of Acconci's Anchors. However, the parallel between Acconci and Lyotard comes through a stumbling manner: eager to avoid the foot-fall that forms a well-trodden path the aim is to keep moving. We cannot dust off these archives whilst reclining in a recumbent posture; we must leap to our feet and become participants in their performance. Neither must we aim to decode the unarticulated voices which grunt and girn their way into our reading. Such bodily emissions were termed the ‘affect-phrase’ by Lyotard, not in order to decipher their meaning, but to acknowledge their effect in leaving conventions of communication provocatively unfulfilled. Let us proceed on foot.

À l'occasion de leur nouvelle exposition « Une histoire, art, architecture et design, des années 80 à aujourd'hui », le Centre Pompidou met à l'honneur l'art contemporain libanais, dans une section intitulée 'L'Artiste comme archiviste'. Parmi les exposants, Walid Raad, artiste de l'archive s'il en est, dont est exposé We Decided To Let Them Say " We Are Convinced " Twice. It Was More Convincing This Way, Beirut '82, City V (2005). Portrait d'un artiste et de son concept, et focus sur My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair : A History of the Car Bomb in the 1975-1991 Lebanese Wars–Volume 1, une autre oeuvre de l'Atlas Group qui complète les problématiques soulevées par le musée parisien.

La significación crítica del Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) de Montreal es decisiva en la interpretación y sistematización de proyectos clave de la arquitectura del
s. XX. Uno de estos casos paradigmáticos es
el proyecto Fun Palace de Cedric Price y Joan Littlewood. Los fondos de CCA proveen una información privilegiada en forma de dibujos y material textual para explicitar este proyecto. En él, se propone una estructura y planta liberadas para dar cabida a un nuevo concepto de centro cultural durante los años 60: móvil, en permanente movimiento y contacto con lo circundante. Ello, además de sus influencias
y consideraciones culturales previas, tendrá importantes implicaciones en la arquitectura para equipamientos culturales de los años posteriores, siendo el Centro Pompidou, proyectado por Richard Rogers y Renzo Piano, uno de los ejemplos más claros.

"Where, how, by whom and for what were the first museums of contemporary art created? These are the key questions addressed by J. Pedro Lorente in this book. In it he explores the concept and history of museums of contemporary art, and the shifting ways in which they have been imagined and presented.

Following an introduction that sets out the historiography and considering questions of terminology, the first part of the book then examines the paradigm of the Musée des Artistes Vivants in Paris and its equivalents in the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. The second part takes the story forward from 1930 to the present, presenting New York's Museum of Modern Art as a new universal role model that found emulators or 'contramodels' in the rest of the Western world during the twentieth century. An epilogue, reviews recent museum developments in the last decades.

Through its adoption of a long-term, worldwide perspective, the book not only provides a narrative of the development of museums of contemporary art, but also sets this into its international perspective. By assessing the extent to which the great museum-capitals – Paris, London and New York in particular – created their own models of museum provision, as well as acknowledging the influence of such models elsewhere, the book uncovers fascinating perspectives on the practice of museum provision, and reveals how present cultural planning initiatives have often been shaped by historical uses.

Contents: Introduction; Part I The Parisian Musée du Luxembourg as a Paradigm in the 19th Century: The origin of the Musée des Artistes Vivants in Paris; The first emulators and alternatives to the Luxembourg; Unresolved dilemmas in the last third of the 19th century; Utopian ideas and experiments at the turn of the 19th century. Part II The Role of the MoMA of New York as the International Model of the 20th Century: Foundations and context of the MoMA's creation; MoMA's transition to adulthood amidst war and confrontations; MoMA as an international role model during the Cold War: triumph and opposition; The Pompidou Centre, a counter-model which ends up imitating MoMA; Topographic review of the new museums of contemporary art at the turn of the millennium; Epilogue; References; Index."

This essay is part of the catalogue dedicated to the exhibition "Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster 1887-2058" at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris in 2015. It proposes an analysis of the work "euqinimod & costumes" (2014), that displayed part of the artist's own archives, a collection of autobiographical fetishes – “vestemes”, “erotemes”, or “biographemes” – handkerchiefs, textiles, clothing, costumes. The text originally written in French is followed by its translation into English.

De la représentation cartographique des limites on passe ainsi, avec Mona Hatoum, aux présentations. La frontière est présente tout au long de l'exposition; on la rencontre partout où l'on se trouve.  Étrange et savoureuse sensation que de franchir la frontière pour celui qui est habitué à s'y tenir.

On the narration and background of the 151⁄2 hour adaptation for television by Rainer W. Fassbinder (1945-82) of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Filmed on 16mm, restored digitally, 35mm copies were drawn from the refinished work by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and Bavaria Media GmbH. Screening: December 2007.  Screened over two days at Cinema 1 of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

espanolLa significacion critica del Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) de Montreal es decisiva en la interpretacion y sistematizacion de proyectos clave de la arquitectura del s. XX. Uno de estos casos paradigmaticos es el proyecto Fun Palace de Cedric Price y Joan Littlewood. Los fondos de CCA proveen una informacion privilegiada en forma de dibujos y material textual para explicitar este proyecto. En el, se propone una estructura y planta liberadas para dar cabida a un nuevo concepto de centro cultural durante los anos 60: movil, en permanente movimiento y contacto con lo circundante. Ello, ademas de sus influencias y consideraciones culturales previas, tendra importantes implicaciones en la arquitectura para equipamientos culturales de los anos posteriores, siendo el Centro Pompidou, proyectado por Richard Rogers y Renzo Piano, uno de los ejemplos mas claros. EnglishThe critical importance of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) of Montreal is decisive towards the inter...

Dès le début des années 1980, par la multiplication des programmes musicaux, mais aussi par l’apparition des premières chaînes musicales, MTV en tête, le clip vidéo apparut comme un nouveau format audiovisuel en pleine expansion. Outil promotionnel voulant gagner en légitimité artistique dès ses premières années, le clip se tourna vers le cinéma, mais intéressa également rapidement les artistes plasticiens. En effet, ces derniers, attirés par cette nouvelle forme de création, furent nombreux à réaliser un ou plusieurs clips musicaux dès le début des années 1980, en marge de leur carrière artistique.
Si la critique cinéma s’intéressa très rapidement au clip, l’institution muséale lui consacra, quant à elle, différentes expositions en France mais aussi aux États-Unis dès le milieu des années 1980. Cet intérêt rapide des institutions pour le clip pose différentes questions, compte tenu de la nature de ce dernier. En effet, le clip, outil promotionnel conçu pour la télévision, n’a pas, a priori, sa place au musée. Pourtant en 1985, celui-ci fait son apparition dans deux expositions en France, Les Immatériaux (1985) et Paysage du clip (1985), ce qui marqua l’entrée du clip au musée, mais également le début d’une certaine reconnaissance par le monde artistique. Il est ainsi question dans cet article de s’interroger sur les conséquences du déplacement du clip au musée par l’étude des deux expositions précédemment citées, mais également dans le cadre de l’exposition Playback qui, 20 ans plus tard, revenait sur l’influence du clip dans la création artistique. Ces trois expositions majeures concernant l’admission du clip au musée nous permettent ainsi de dessiner les rapports complexes que l’institution muséale entretient avec cette forme télévisuelle depuis les années 1980, de sa reconnaissance à une remise en question de son exposition muséale.

Download the sample chapter, "Gothic Paris: Notre-Dame and the Île de la Cité," from www.mayspangler.com. The Teacher Manual e-book (753 pp., 18 b/w ill., 59 colored ill.) for “Paris in Architecture, Literature and Art” is available for download from Peter Lang’s website. For textbook and manual examination copies, please contact [email protected] or 1-800-770-5264.

The teacher manual provides detailed commentaries of all documents presented in the student textbook, with analysis that will be engaging to a scholar but also accessible to instructors without a background in architecture, literature, or art. The wide variety of pedagogical features gives flexibility for instructors to fit their specific areas of interest, as well as those of the target audience. Among those, preamble activities and timelines introduce chapters’ main idea, observation questions build critical reading and analyzing skills, interactive activities foster cooperative learning, and projects lead to oral and short film presentations.

Sergio Birga’s 1976 painting, “Main basse sur la ville,” features the construction of Beaubourg in the Halles Quarter, and the way postmodernism incorporates anthropomorphism in its design even after the “death” of the Renaissance subject. By showing the developers’ failed attempt to fill in the “Trou” des Halles, Birga’s painting indicates the postmodern to be a condition rather than a style, with its center a self-engulfing hole, deconstructed from its threatening banlieue. He also offers a postmodern version of the Vitruvian Man in an off-center, partial and feminine anthropomorphic model.

This article focuses on the exhibition Les Immatériaux curated by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput at the Centre Pompidou in 1985, and more particularly on its soundtrack. The exhibition was devised around the question of "postmodernity", and aimed to reflect an era where the question of intangibility was becoming more and more present with the development of new technologies. Visitors were given wireless headphones to wear as they wandered around the exhibit, so that they could listen to a specially recorded soundtrack. However, the soundtrack, which broadcast texts of writers and philosophers but also recorded sounds-music and various noises-that had been chosen to resonate with the developed themes in the exhibition, led to much confusion among visitors. In this article, we will examine the initial intentions of the exhibition team concerning the soundtrack and its broadcasting system by comparing them with the visitors' experience.

« Ce n'est pas une exposition, mais une oeuvre d'art l'exemple des Immatériaux de Jean-François Lyotard » Francesca Gallo J'ai consacré aux Immatériaux ? objet d'une attention fluctuante au cours des dernières années, jusqu'à l'époque actuelle où un rôle fondamental lui est reconnu dans l'histoire du Centre Pompidou ? mon doctorat en histoire de l'art. Au cours d'une recherche balisée par des textes publiés et des documents inédits, j'ai eu la possibilité d'appréhender les analogies profondes qui existent entre la conception de cette exposition, la réflexion et l'expérimentation que Jean-François Lyotard mène autour du cinéma et les nombreuses interventions qu'il a consacrées à des artistes contemporains (1) .

In the summer of 1971, Ove Arup & Partners and Piano+Rogers Architects presented to the French government what they called a "3-dimensional wall" as part of their project bid for the Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris. This would resolve structural and expressive questions and unite three elements in a spatial sequence. The architects imagined the 3-dimensional wall as a 3D sequence of screens that would create original and interactive effects. The engineers saw it as a structure that, described as "brut," aspired to become a manifesto for a new metal structure in cast steel. Through recourse to a systematic analysis of published and unpublished sources and of interviews with the architects, engineers and administrators involved in the project, this paper reconstructs the evolution of the Centre Pompidou's 3-dimensional wall from its initial conception to the gradual loss of its original layered structure.

Ce livre n’a pas de précédent : avant sa publication conjointe en ukrainien et en français, aucun ouvrage ne retraçait de manière synthétique l’histoire de l’art ukrainien depuis le tournant des 19e-20e siècles jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Sa réalisation est l’aboutissement d’un projet commun engagé depuis deux ans par les Editions ArtHuss de Kiev et les Nouvelles éditions Place.
Souvent sous les feux de l’actualité́ au regard des enjeux géopolitiques qu’elle représente, l’Ukraine reste une grande inconnue. Une révolution permanente. L’art ukrainien contemporain et ses racines propose une immersion dans l’art contemporain ukrainien, l’un des plus vivants du continent européen, malgré́, ou peut-être grâce à la situation tendue dans laquelle se trouve le pays.
Alisa Lozhkina, commissaire d’exposition reconnue internationalement, inscrit cet art dans un parcours qui prend son origine à la fin du 19e siècle, passe par l’avant-garde, le réalisme socialiste et les courants qui s’épanouissent après la fin de l’URSS.
En Ukraine, art et société́ sont à ce point entremêles que cet ouvrage se lit également comme une histoire politique et sociale – de la révolution bolchevique à la révolution orange (2004) et à celle de Maïdan (2014), qui ont été́ retransmises sur tous les écrans du monde.
L’engagement social et l’exigence d’un regard sans concession – souvent photographique – sur la réalité présente comme sur le passé de l’Ukraine caractérise les œuvres de ces artistes et fait sans doute leur principale force. L’artiste devient immanquablement historien, qui intervient pour sauvegarder les œuvres du passé, qui dirige parfois lui- même un musée, et ce, tout en se situant au cœur des événements politiques, qu’il ne s’attache pas seulement à comprendre ou à illustrer, mais aussi à provoquer.
Le texte est richement illustré, avec une matière documentaire inédite. Les reproductions des œuvres contemporaines proviennent pour la plupart des collections des artistes eux- mêmes.

Alisa Lozhkina
Historienne d’art et commissaire d’exposition, elle vit à Kiev. De 2013 à 2016, elle est directrice adjointe du Mystetskyi Arsenal, le plus grand musée d’art contemporain d’Ukraine. De 2010 à 2016, elle est rédactrice en chef de Art Ukraine. En 2014, elle co- organise l’exposition « Je suis une goutte d’eau dans l’océan. L’art de la révolution ukrainienne » à la Künstlerhaus de Vienne et au MOCAK de Cracovie. En 2018, elle est commissaire en chef d’« Une révolution permanente. L’art ukrainien aujourd’hui » au Ludwig Museum de Budapest, exposition pour laquelle elle est nominée au Global Fine Art Awards de New York.

Igor Sokologorsky
Docteur en philosophie, responsable de l’aire géographique « Modernités russes » du Labex Comod (université de Lyon), il dirige la collection « L’art à l’écrit » aux Nouvelles éditions Place. Il a été attaché culturel à l’ambassade de France à Moscou (2010-2014). Il est le traducteur d’« Une révolution permanente. L’art contemporain ukrainien et ses racines ».

Cyrille Zola-Place
Editeur et écrivain sous d’autres noms, il dirige les Nouvelles éditions Place.

Lundi 3 février, à partir de 18h30
En présence de l’auteure, Igor Sokologorsky et Cyrille Zola-Place Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Centre Pompidou, niveau 3
La conférence se tiendra en Anglais.


https://www.centrepompidou.fr/ http://bibliothequekandinsky.centrepompidou.fr/ https://carnetbk.hypotheses.org/
https://www.nouvelleseditionsplace.com/

Article publié dans le catalogue qui a accompagné la retrospective sur Frank Gehry au Centre Pompidou entre le 8 octobre 2014 - 26 janvier 2015.

Dans Aurélien LEMONIER, Frédéric  MIGAYROU (dirs.), Frank Gehry, Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2014, pp. 116-125.

En las postrimerías del Período Especial  comenzó un lento proceso de informatización de la sociedad cubana que impactaría positivamente y cambiaría la noción en torno al intercambio de datos. La denominada revolución informática estuvo acompañada no solo de la renovación tecnológica, expresada en la sustitución del cable coaxial por la fibra óptica, el paso de los sistemas MS-DOS a Windows y el reemplazo de los ordenadores 386 y 486 por PENTIUM; sino también, del surgimiento de nuevos programas estatales orientados a regular el acceso a la información.

À travers une étude de cas de chacune des formes de délocalisation du musée du Louvre et du Centre Pompidou, sur le territoire français, en Europe, puis dans le monde, les stratégies de rayonnement de ces deux institutions nationales sont analysées par le recours à une approche comparative. L’expansionnisme territorial des deux établissements phares du paysage muséal parisien se caractérise par la valorisation de leur nom de marque, de leurs collections et de leur savoir-faire, qui est abordé en regard d’une pratique qualifiée de « franchise muséale ». Ainsi, le « musée franchisé » - déterminé par l’essaimage de l’institution mère détentrice d’actifs matériels et immatériels valorisables à l’étranger - permet de questionner le devenir des deux musées et, dans une perspective plus large, d’envisager quel sera le musée de demain.

The article examines a group of exhibitions that took place in the late seventies and early eighties and are useful for grasping what was at stake regarding the debates on the tensions between modernist and post-modernist architecture. Among the exhibitions that are examined are Europa-America: Architettura urbana, alternative suburbane, curated by Vittorio Gregotti for the Biennale di Venezia in 1976; La Presenza del passato, curated by Paolo Portoghesi for the Biennale di Venezia in 1980; the French version of La presenza del passato-Présence de l'histoire, l'après modernisme-held in the framework of the Festival d'Automne de Paris in 1981; Architectures en France: Modernité /post-modernité , curated by Chantal Béret and held at the Institut Français d'Architecture (18 November 1981-6 February 1982); La modernité , un projet inachevé : 40 architectures, curated by Paul Chemetov and Jean-Claude Garcias for the Festival d'Automne de Paris in 1982; La modernité ou l'esprit du temps, curated by Jean Nouvel, Patrice Goulet, and Francois Barré and held at the Centre Pompidou in 1982; and Nouveaux plaisirs d'architecture, curated by Jean Dethier for the Centre Pompidou in 1985, among other exhibitions. Analysing certain important texts published in the catalogues of the afore-mentioned exhibitions, the debates that accompanied the exhibitions and an ensemble of articles in French architectural magazines such as L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui and the Techniques & Architecture , the article aims to present the questions that were at the centre of the debates regarding the opposition or osmosis between the modernist and postmodernist ideals. Some figures, such as Jean Nouvel, were more in favour of the cross-fertilisation between modernity and postmodernity, while others, such as Paul Chemetov, believed that architects should rediscover modernity in order to enhance the civic dimension of architecture. Following Pierre Bourdieu's approach, the article argues that the tension between the ways in which each of these exhibitions treats the role of the image within architectural design and the role of architecture for the construction of a vision regarding progress is the expression of two divergent positions in social space.