The Making of the Great Museums of Paris: The Making and Remaking of the Centre Pompidou

Anna Hiddleston will explain how the Pompidou Center of Contemporary Art located in its iconic building on the Beaubourg plateau designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers came to be the first “presidential museum”, the reasons for the renovation of the museum that will start in 2026 and continue until 2030, how the museum’s ambitious cultural program “Constellation” will enable it to operate during the five years of renovation works, and how the museum will be transformed after the works have been completed.

About the Presenter

Anna Hiddleston

Anna Hiddleston is the Associate Curator in the Department of Modern Art at Centre Pompidou.

About the Series Curator and Moderator

Russell Kelley

Russell Kelley was the curator and moderator of the past five winters’ Zoom lecture series on the History and Heritage of France featuring the “Grands Châteaux of the Loire and Île de France”, “The Making of the French Garden”,  “The Great Churches of Paris”, “The Making of the Great Museums of Paris – From the Revolution Until 1900”, and “World Monuments in Paris”. He is the author of The Making of Paris: The Story of How Paris Evolved from a Fishing Village into the World’s Most Beautiful City (Lyons Press, 2021) and Walking Through the Ages of Paris – Ten Historical Walking Tours Through the City of Light (Lyons Press, to be published in 2026), and has lived in Paris for more than 30 years.