Faced with economic difficulties and a 20-25% drop in attendance over the past two years the Pinacothèque de Paris has decided to close its sites on the place de la Madeleine. The for-profit private museum’s parent company Art Héritage France was put into receivership last November, so Marc Restellini, the Pinacothèque’s founder and president, may be anticipating a court-ordered liquidation in the decision to shut up shop.
The Paris space will stop operating from 6pm on Monday, 15 February, due to “a major drop in visitors” and a “deathly economic climate, linked largely to the 13 November attacks”, Restellini says. The current exhibition, Karl Lagerfeld: a Visual Journey, which was scheduled to run through Sunday, 12 March, will therefore close early.
However, the museum has also announced a “medium-term relocation to more economically-manageable premises”, mentioning a project dedicated to contemporary art and another dedicated to sculpture and tribal art to take place in the next four years.
The permanent collections in Paris—which are really only medium-term loans from collectors—will be reassigned to the Pinacothèque’s space in Singapore, which opened in 30 May 2015 but is led by a different parent company.
