The Grand Palais has joined the Louvre and the Orsay on the list of major cultural sites in Paris to close due to flood risk from the rising Seine River after days of heavy rainfall. The massive exhibition space, located along the Seine between the Invalides and Alexandre III bridges, closed early to visitors today, 3 June, at 2:30 pm, according to an official statement. A spokeswoman for the institution confirmed the news to The Art Newspaper.
The closure—a “preventive measure”—involves “the entire site”, the release says, including Huang Yong Ping’s Monumenta commission, a 250m-long snake, the thematic exhibition Carambolages and shows on Korean ceramics, the Modern Portuguese painter Amadeo de Souza Cardoso and the Malian photographer Seydou Keïta. The Grand Palais has released a second announcement that it will remain closed tomorrow, 4 June.
Two branches of France’s national library—its headquarters in the François-Mitterand building and the Arsenal Library in the Bastille neighbourhood—also closed today, and will remain closed until Sunday.
UPDATE: All the exhibitions at the Grand Palais reopened to the public yesterday morning (5 June). France’s environment ministry confirmed that the level of the river Seine was slowly receding after reaching a peak of just over 6m on the night of Friday, 3 June. France’s national library is open again today, 6 June, while the Musée du Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay are due to reopen on Wednesday (8 June).
