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My thoughts on “THE SHAPE OF TIME” which I saw at Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum in November 2019

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Exhibition Overview
Thoughts on “A Chance Encounter”
Reference links

Exhibition Overview

Exhibition Title: THE SHAPE OF TIME
Dates: Friday, November 8, 2019 – Sunday, May 9, 2021
Location: Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Project 2019-2024
Nearest Station: Subway Line 11 / Yunjin Road Station

The Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Project was originally scheduled to run from 2019 to 2024, but the contract has now been extended for another five years, from 2024 to 2029, allowing works from the Centre Pompidou to continue to be exhibited.

Five exhibitions will be held between the museum’s opening in 2019 and 2025, four of which will be from the Centre Pompidou’s collection.

「Reinventing Landscape」Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection vol. IV
- 2025.04.29 – 2026.10.18
「Mirrors of the Portrait」 Highlights of the Centre Pompidou collection Third semi-permanent exhibition
- 2023.07.21 – 2025.02.16
「Cui Jie: Species as Gifts」 Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project
- 2023.11.10 – 2024.02.25
「The Voice of Things」 Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection vol.II
- 2021.07.28 – 2023.05.07
「The Shape of Time」 Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection vol.I
- 2019.11.08 – 2021.05.09

The West Bund Museum building was designed by London-born architect David Chipperfield. The museum’s predominantly white design features windows that let in natural light and an atrium surrounded by pillars.

The shadows created by the columns and natural light create a beautiful contrast with the white interior.

For tourists, the subway is the most convenient way to get to the museum; if you’re in Shanghai, you can easily access it from almost anywhere. The nearest station to the Pompidou Centre x West Bund Museum is Yunjin Road Station on Shanghai Metro Line 11.

As for admission, cash circulation in China has decreased, and as of 2019, online payments have become the norm. However, at the time of my visit, Visa cards were accepted at the ticket office at the museum entrance. At the time of my visit, fewer places in China accepted international credit cards, so payment was often difficult.

Thoughts on “A Chance Encounter”

I visited Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum on November 8, 2019, the opening day, and had the opportunity to view “THE SHAPE OF TIME,” an exhibition from the museum’s collection. Here are my impressions.

“The Shape of Time,” an exhibition from the Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum’s collection, was held at the West Bank Art Museum in Shanghai from 2019 to 2021. However, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the museum shortly after it opened, and the exhibition ran in the midst of the pandemic.

As a result, restrictions were imposed on travel from Japan and entry into China, and it is likely that not many people were able to view the exhibition.

The exhibition features selected works on the theme of time and space, spanning works from 1900 to the present. I have included photos of works that caught my eye during my visit.

Some of the works, including Pablo Picasso’s “Le Guitariste” and Robert Delaunay’s “La Ville de Paris” (not pictured), were exhibited at the “Cubism Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris: A Revolution in Beauty: From Picasso and Braque to Delaunay and Chagall,” held at the National Museum of Western Art.

Considering the theme of the works, it seems somewhat ironic that modern and contemporary works by Boltanski and others are on display here.

As I checked the artists’ names while writing captions for the works, I found that many of them overlapped with works by artists in the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art’s collection, and the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art’s permanent exhibition catalog was very helpful in identifying the works. Some of the works can also be found by searching the Centre Pompidou’s official website.

I am grateful for the chance to have the opportunity to view the exhibition through a series of strokes of good fortune.

*1 According to the timeline published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Japan’s COVID-19 countermeasure period is roughly from December 2019 to May 2023.