Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project
Reinventing Landscape
Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection vol. IV
Fourth semi-permanent exhibition
29 April 2025 - 18 October 2026 | Gallery 1 & 2
Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project, semi-permanent exhibition,Reinventing Landscape. Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection vol. IV, exhibition view, West Bund Museum, Photo：Alessandro Wang
Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum project presents the fourth part of its semi-permanent exhibition entitled “Reinventing Landscape” from the spring of 2025 and until late 2026. For this new chapter, the exhibition turns the spotlight on landscape art. A popular pictorial genre of the 19th century and a favourite theme of the impressionists, landscape art saw profound transformations in the 20th and 21st centuries. In illustration, the display presented here was designed as a vast themed tour based on the Centre Pompidou's very rich collection in the fields of painting, photography, cinema, design and new media.
Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project, semi-permanent exhibition,Reinventing Landscape. Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection vol. IV, exhibition view, West Bund Museum, Photo：Alessandro Wang
"Reinventing Landscape" brings together nearly 70 original works from the Centre Pompidou collection. From 1905 to today, changes in landscape art have been considered based on stylistic categories, but also by enquiring as to the artist's point of view or their relationship with light. The exhibition also features works made in nature itself, as well as attempts to recreate environments that resemble landscapes within the exhibition space. Audiences are invited to journey through major art movements such as Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Art, engaging with both iconic masterpieces and pioneering works in modern and contemporary art history.
Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project, semi-permanent exhibition,Reinventing Landscape. Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection vol. IV, exhibition view, West Bund Museum, Photo：Alessandro Wang
The seven sections proposed across two galleries is dedicated to different ways of representing the natural or urban environments in which human societies live, including: "Structuring Space" that explores Cubism and the reshaping of the perspective system, "Surreal Visions" that goes deep into dreams and subconscious landscapes, "The Dazzled Gaze" that focuses on chromatic exploration, "Abstract Landscapes" interpreted with abstract language, "Views from Above" that presents a bird's-eye view of multi-dimensional perspectives, "Urban Landscapes" that explores industrialization and urban development, and expands the cognitive interface of the world, "Panoramas" jointly construct a grand "landscape" journey, which also makes the exhibition more realistic and penetrating.
As "Reinventing Landscape" opens, the West Bund Museum will also launch its first self-curated exhibition "Building Shanghai: Architecture, Urbanism, and Culture since 1949". Featuring more than 80 detailed models, hundreds of rare architectural drawings, photographs, and videos, alongside contemporary artistic interpretations oof urban memories, the exhibition presents a multifaceted exploration of modernity in Chinese architecture.
Curator: Christian Briend (Head of the Modern Collections Department at the Centre Pompidou)