Cartier Foundation For Contemporary Art Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

In 1984 Cartier, the luxury jewelry maker, established the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, making it the first European company to support and raise public awareness of the world’s great artistic talents through direct commissioning. Today, the Cartier Foundation has an impressive and rapidly developing collection of over thirteen hundred works by 350 artists from forty countries.

To commemorate its thirtieth anniversary, the Cartier Foundation has invited the public to a range of exhibitions, performances, and other events—which continue through March 2015—at its Jean Nouvel-designed headquarters in Paris. The first part of the celebration presents the exhibition Vivid Memories featuring iconic pieces marking events in the foundation’s history, including images from its archives, photographs, videos, and film by artists such as Marc Newson, Cai Guo-Qiang, Peter Halley, and others. One of the highlights on David Lynch’s giant LED screen is a live and impromptu performance at the foundation in 1990 of the Velvet Underground with the late Lou Reed. This first part of the anniversary celebration can be seen through September.

From October through March, part two will address the past and the future with an interactive scenography that will combine the visual and performing arts using new technologies produced by the architectural and design studio of New York’s Diller Scofidio and Renfro. foundation.cartier.com

James Lee Byars, The Monument to Language, 1995. Photo © Florian Kleinefenn