In its first North American partnership, the Centre Pompidou has joined forces with the City of Jersey City to reactivate the 1912 Pathside Building in Journal Square, a business and cultural center and a major public transportation hub located within a 15-minute PATH train ride from lower Manhattan and Newark Penn Station.
The Paris-based cultural institution, founded in 1977 and housed in the iconic Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers-designed museum, incorporates the Musée National d'Art Moderne, containing the richest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. The Centre Pompidou Metz, designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Shigeru Ban, recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. In the past decade, it has become the most visited center of contemporary art in France outside the capital region. More recently, the Pompidou has expanded beyond France to include long-term partnerships with local authorities in Málaga, Spain (2015), Brussels, Belgium (2018), and Shanghai, China (2019).
The renovation and redesign of the historic structure in Jersey City, acquired by the city in 2017, is being led by OMA NY partner Jason Long. The 58,000-square-foot, four-story, red-brick building, originally offices for the Public Service Electric and Gas Company, offers generous floor-to-ceiling heights and ample access to daylight for its future transformation. “From its founding, the Centre Pompidou has crossed disciplines and cultures,” says Long. “This is both a perfect fit and a provocation to use the building in unexpected ways.”
The Centre Pompidou x Jersey City is scheduled to open in early 2024.
