Tag: Renzo Piano

Francesco Bonami’s Case Against Trend-Chasing in the Museum Business

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Under Francesco Bonami’s direction, By Art Matters has embraced a curatorial model that favors instinct, experimentation and intellectual risk. Photo: Qingshan Wu, courtesy of By Art Matters

Late last year, I had the privilege of visiting Hangzhou, China, as the guest of By Art Matters, a remarkable museum that opened in 2021. The museum is situated in a sprawling complex designed by Renzo Piano, and across several floors and two buildings, it takes an innovative approach to curation, both in the subjects it tackles and in the way exhibitions are organized. Located just an hour by train from Shanghai, it is truly a must-visit for anyone traveling in the region. At least part of its success can be attributed to the work of curator Francesco Bonami, who serves as its director. I caught up with Bonami in Shanghai to learn more about how this one-of-a-kind institution came to be.

In person, you told me a little bit about how you came to know By Art Matters through your friend Renzo Piano, who designed the complex it occupies in Hangzhou. I’d love to hear more about these early stages. How did the institution’s curatorial ethos evolve?

My friendship with Renzo Piano began through a book, Dopo tutto non è brutto (After All, It’s Not Ugly), which included a chapter on one of his buildings. That text amused him enough to get in touch, and a genuine connection followed. When Lilin later asked Renzo to design the Ooeli campus, she also asked whether he knew anyone who could help with the art space that would become By Art Matters.

The name was proposed as a contraction of the phrase “by the way, art matters.” Even without a literal meaning, it conveyed the essential message: a place where art always matters more than the strategies built around it. That principle reflects Lilin’s philosophy, one shared fully from the outset.

During an early visit to Hangzhou, the site was little more than a tent with chickens wandering around. Renzo immediately grasped the location’s orientation and potential and, over lunch, sketched the concept with his signature green Pentel marker. That was around 2014, and the core idea of that drawing remains visible today in how millions of visitors move through the campus each year. Credit belongs to Renzo for a vision that extends far beyond architectural “hardware” into long-term spatial experience.

Curator Francesco Bonami. Courtesy of By Art Matters

When I had the pleasure of visiting Hangzhou, By Art Matters had just opened an innovative retrospective showcasing the work of Inga Svala Thorsdottir & Wu Shanzhuan. I also took in the previously opened exhibition featuring outfits from every collection by Martin Margiela. How do these diverse shows reflect the vision of By Art Matters?

By Art Matters maintains a deliberately flexible approach to programming. There is a conscious avoidance of following the usual strategies of the art world—partly out of conviction, partly out of a desire for a more direct, fresh and even naïve attitude. Projects are considered individually, and choices are made based on what resonates most strongly at a given moment rather than on external expectations or positioning.

What are some of your favorite shows that you’ve done with By Art Matters, and why?

The first exhibition, “A Show About Nothing,” was especially successful. Other highlights include “Mind the Gap,” a long-distance conversation between Li Ming and Darren Bader, as well as “360 Degrees Painting.”

You’ve programmed high-profile shows across the globe. How do you try to balance geographic specificity with making an exhibition that will resonate with someone in the international art world? How has that been demonstrated at By Art Matters?

Finding that balance remains a challenge, since audiences differ significantly across contexts. Assumptions that feel natural to a Western curator can be far from obvious to younger curators or local teams. Working through those gaps—often by questioning what is taken for granted—has been an ongoing and instructive process at By Art Matters.

You’re known for dispensing insights about the broader art world on your Instagram. Could you speak about some trends you’ve noticed in recent years, ones you either endorse or do not care for?

Following or responding to trends is risky, since by the time they are acted upon, it is often already too late. Instinct—one’s own or that of trusted collaborators—matters more, along with a willingness to risk mistakes rather than chase relevance.

If you had to offer advice to a young artist starting out today, what would it be?

Work toward success, but remain a servant to personal ideas rather than to the ideas of others.

What have you learned about Chinese audiences in your time working with By Art Matters?

The most striking quality is the openness and flexibility of mindset. Growing up in a Western context often meant being asked “why?” repeatedly, with long delays before a project could be realized, if at all. In China, the response is more often “why not?” followed by rapid realization—sometimes almost too rapid!

More Arts Interviews

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Dan Duray

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February 13, 2026
The Chelsea Insider Guide: Post-Gallery, Pre-Gimmick, Always Hungry

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Chelsea is one of the few Manhattan neighborhoods that feels deliberately built for the long game. Its borders are technical (Sixth Avenue to the Hudson, 14th to 34th), but its cultural footprint sprawls far beyond the map. What began as a Lenape village became a shipping stronghold, then a haven for immigrant labor, then a no-rules frontier for artists priced out of SoHo. Today, Chelsea folds all of it in: dockside grit, industrial bones, progressive politics and a post-gallery globalism that somehow still feels local.

The neighborhood’s transformation wasn’t just about rising rent. It was infrastructure-led. The High Line reengineered the city’s relationship to public space. Piers became parks. Warehouses became megawatt galleries. Rail yards became real estate—some of the most ambitious on the continent. The Hudson Yards development may grab headlines, but Chelsea’s character lives in the contrast between a Dia installation and a 24-hour diner, a sidewalk flower stand and a Jean Nouvel façade.

Chelsea didn’t get interesting by chasing what its other neighborhoods had to offer. It drew energy from what already existed, whether that was freight tunnels, factory space, counterculture or queerness, and built around it. The result is a neighborhood that knows how to absorb change without losing plot. It’s where Zaha Hadid landed her only New York project. Where a community board can still kill a billionaire’s plans. Where you can see work by the next big artist, and then see them at the bodega. Chelsea knows its value isn’t hype. It’s infrastructure, intent and staying power. You don’t need to understand art to get Chelsea. But give it 10 blocks, and you might start pretending you do.

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Paul Jebara

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October 29, 2025
Five Museum Shows to See During Houston Art Week
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- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- Through September 21, 2025
Immersive exhibitions in today’s art world are most often synonymous with pop-aesthetic displays or tech-driven entertainment. A.A. Murakami’s exhibition, however, offers something altogether different. Here, the immersivity of the multi-sensory experience and the artworks that expand into entire environments invite viewers into a more spiritual and contemplative dimension.
A.A. Murakami—the Japan-based duo of Alexander Groves and Azusa Murakami—are pioneers of what they call “ephemeral tech,” employing cutting-edge technologies to create fleeting encounters where visitors engage directly with technology, unmediated by screens or keyboards. In contrast to the infinite replication and storage that defines our digital age, their practice draws on naturally transient materials such as smoke, bubbles and plasma to shape moments that exist only in the present, demanding a heightened awareness of beauty’s fragility and impermanence. Rooted in Japanese philosophy and aesthetics, “Floating Words” unfolds as a sequence of immersive, sensory landscapes where technology conjures natural phenomena, opening space for slow contemplation of their elusive beauty and mystery.
In this exhibition marking their U.S. institutional debut, A.A. Murakami act not simply as artists but as orchestrators of impermanence, architects of experience who bring visitors back to the most genuine, universal sense of awe and wonder that nature can still awaken, inviting a creative and generative connection with it.
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Elisa Carollo

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September 18, 2025
Looking Ahead, the Centre Pompidou in Paris Announces Closure Plans

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Laurent Le Bon, president of the Centre Pompidou, at the recent press conference discussing the museum’s planned closure. (c) Didier Plowy

The President of the Centre Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon, hosted a press conference yesterday (Feb. 6) to announce how the museum would function during its forthcoming five-year closure (2025-2030). The iconic building, conceived of in 1977 by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, will undergo a 260 million euro renovation, mostly funded by the French state. “We are lucky to be in a country where there is public support,” Le Bon said.

The decision to close the institution was made in 2020 as part of a plan to optimize energy efficiency, make the museum more accessible and remove asbestos.

Le Bon opened the conference by addressing the in-house museum worker strikes that ended on January 29, speaking about what had been resolved and what hadn’t. He then pivoted to the focus of the conference—how the museum’s collections will function during its gradual closure, confirming that the new construction would officially begin in 2026 in anticipation of opening in 2030

“J’espère,” he conceded (“I hope”).

In his remarks, Le Bon made a distinction between the physicality of the Centre Pompidou building and “l’esprit”—the spirit—of the Centre Pompidou, which he felt could be easily re-established outside its walls. The press conference was titled “Constellation,” and this idea was a nod to the way the museum’s collection might be enjoyed even outside its distinguished home.

The exterior of the Centre Pompidou.

The largest portion of the museum’s holdings will go to a new 30,000-square-meter art center and storage facility in Massy, a banlieue south of Paris that will open in the summer of 2026 when the Centre Pompidou construction begins with the unwieldy name Centre Pompidou Francilien—Fabrique de l’art/Musée national Picasso-Paris.

There will also be exhibitions pulling from the Centre Pompidou’s collections at the to-be-reopened Grand Palais, beginning in June of 2025 with “Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén”—highlighting the artist couple and the first museum director of the Centre Pompidou, the latter having collected their work extensively—in a 2,000-square-meter space. In tandem, an art brut ensemble from the collection Decharme consisting of more than 900 works will be shown in a separately demarcated 800-square-meter space. These shows will be followed by the March 2026 “Henri Matisse 1941-1954 – Color Without Limit,” which will feature pieces from the years the artist worked with gouache découpée. About 170 Matisse works from the Centre Pompidou’s collection will be displayed in the exhibition.

President of the Centre Pompidou Laurent le Bon (L) and President of the Grand Palais Didier Fusillier (R). (c) Didier Plowy, 2024

The Musée du Louvre will open a show on the objet d’art in October of 2026, in what Le Bon called an “histoire d’amour,” or more than a partnership. Objects dating from the Middle Ages to the Second Empire in the Louvre will stand in contrast to works by Ettore Sottsass, Sheila Hicks, Joan Miró and Eileen Grey. The Philharmonie de Paris, in the 19th arrondissement, will host a show on Kandinsky and music in 2025. And the Musée du Quai Branly and the Musée de l’Orangerie will also host Centre Pompidou collection-focused exhibitions, with programming to be announced.

Outside of Paris, the Pompidou will share works and provide exhibition material to cultural venues in Lille, Lyon, Toulon, Auxerre and of course, its satellite location in Metz. And outside of France, the Centre Pompidous in Málaga and Shanghai will maintain normal operations, supporting the museum’s decentralized approach to the temporary closure. The Kanal space in Belgium is expected to open at the end of 2025; the Centre Pompidou Hanwha-Seoul will open at about the same time in an existing building set to be renovated at some future date. In the U.S., the Centre Pompidou x New Jersey, which will be located in Jersey City, is expected to open in 2027.

While the Centre Pompidou workers involved in the three-month strike referenced “perpetually increasing” damage to artwork “caused by incessant loans” in their November letter to France’s Ministry of Culture, pieces from the museum’s collection are often on the move without incident. Some 6,000 works are lent out by the institution nationally and internationally every year for independent exhibitions.

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Sarah Moroz

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February 7, 2024