With "Designs from France" opening next Friday (Dec. 3) in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, and "New Waves, a point of view on French contemporary art" scheduled to embrace local museum goers in Shanghai on January 15, the Center Pompidou is trying to expand its allure among fans of art and design across China.

The acclaimed French national art and design institute in Paris, which has curated the shows, has every reason to enhance its presence in this country during the Year of France in China, which began in October and will continue through July next year.

While the exhibition of "Designs" will travel to Shenzhen in January, the French contemporary art show will go to Guangzhou in March and finally arrive in Beijing in May.

Meanwhile, a photographic gala of "Paris as seen by photographers," which is also put together by curators from the Center Pompidou, will greet viewers in March in Guangzhou and May in Hong Kong. Art lovers in Hong Kong already feasted their eyes on the exhibition of "Parade," a masterpiece by Picasso for three weeks in October at the Oval Atrium of the IFC Mall.

"All these shows in China are unprecedented in the center's overseas exhibition projects," Bruno Racine, Center Pompidou's president, said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese media early this month in Paris.

Racine indicated that, with these exhibitions and other work, the center hopes to further strengthen its current joint-bidding to run a museum of modern art in Hong Kong, along with the Dynamic Star consortium that includes local property giants Sun Hung Kai and Cheung Kong.

The latter has also bid to build and run all the facilities at the Kowloon Cultural Center, the city's largest cultural development.

The proposed museum will be located in the heart of a 40-hectare spit of reclaimed land on the shores of the Kowloon district that has been earmarked by the Hong Kong government as an arts hub housing a string of cultural and sports centers.

"As the first cultural center that has concerned itself with the whole of European culture, the Pompidou needs to go further to open new virgin ground in a faraway place," Racine said.

"China came to our mind first and we don't need to explain why," he said.

"We believe ours is a very good project. If we succeed, we will try to build a French-Chinese team to manage the museum," he said.

While the museum will accumulate its own collection, there will also be exchanges with the Pompidou in Paris.

"We know that contemporary art in China has won acclaim and we want to increase our collection of contemporary Chinese pieces," he said.

(China Daily November 27, 2004)