La Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain occupies a stunning glass building on boulevard Raspail, Paris, whose exterior is defined by its garden setting.

Designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winner Jean Nouvel (who is also the creator of the Institut du Monde Arabe and the Musée du Quai Branly) and built in 1994, the building features a glass curtain wall that screens a Lebanese cedar tree planted in 1823 by the writer François-René de Chateaubriand, who lived here at the time. The museum is intriguingly blended with its outdoor spaces, including a garden designed by Lothar Baumgarten.

Alain Dominique Perrin, former president of Cartier, established la Fondation in a late 18th-century chateau in Jouy-en-Josas, near Versailles, with artist-in-residence programs through which new art has been created, and presented by the Fondation. Over the years, an exciting series of exhibitions has showcased works by artists, industrial designers, couturiers, musicians, filmmakers and mathematicians, with innovative programming that bridges the visual and plastic arts.

Photo © Jean Nouvel / Adagp, Paris, 2011. Photo © Luc Boegly

La Fondation Cartier is currently presenting a 30-year anniversary show of works in diverse media, on view through 21 September. “The common theme that runs through our shows is perhaps the idea of making things, the notion of the handmade that connects art to craft,” Hervé Chandès, the director, said at the opening celebrations in June.

Photos: Peggy Roalf

Vivid Memories presents selected works from its 1,500-piece collection of pieces commissioned from artists whose works la Fondation has previously shown. Photographs, sculptures, films and paintings will be changed regularly throughout the run, which concludes 21 September. La Fondation Cartier, 261 boulevard Raspail, 14^th Arrondissment, Paris. Information.

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