In Metách, a branch of the Pompidou Center for Modern Art is opening

Paris - The first branch of the world-famous Paris Pompidou Center for Modern Art will be ceremonially opened on Tuesday in Metz, eastern France. The museum, which resembles a crumpled bamboo Chinese hat, will open to the public on Wednesday. The Lorraine metropolis hopes that it will ensure a similar international fame as that provided to the struggling Basque port of Bilbao by the branch of the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York.
    This marks the first decentralization of one of the large French museums. However, in just two years, the first branch of the Paris Louvre is set to open its doors in Lens in the north of the country.
    The idea originated from former French Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon. The aim was to fill certain gaps on the cultural map of France and to make as many of the 60,000 works from the Pompidou Center's deposits available, of which it can exhibit a maximum of 2,000 at one time.
    Three years later, in November 2006, construction began, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and Frenchman Jean de Gastines. The construction cost over 69 million euros (1.72 billion crowns), most of which was funded by the city and region.
    The new museum provides 5,000 square meters of exhibition space and allows for the display of some very large works that could not be exhibited in Paris. One of them is Picasso's massive curtain for the ballet Parade from 1917, which has reportedly never been exhibited in France since its unveiling at the Paris Châtelet Theatre.
    The opening exhibition is titled "Masterpieces?" and includes nearly 800 artifacts from various giants of 20th-century visual arts - besides Pablo Picasso, there are also Alberto Giacometti, Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró.
    The first five days will allow free access to the museum, as well as all events accompanying its opening.
    The museum's organizers hope it will become a magnet not only for the entire adjacent area of France but also for nearby regions of Germany and Belgium and for Luxembourg, where about 10 million people live together. They also count on art-loving Parisians - thanks to the super-express TGV, the journey from Paris to Metz takes only 80 minutes. They anticipate that next year, the museum will be visited by 200,000 people. (The Pompidou Center in Paris attracts six million visitors annually.)