On June 4, 2021 in Jersey City, New Jersey, the Centre Pompidou Jersey City museum will become an all-new leading international cultural hub, helping to revitalize the city’s historic downtown Journal Square.
Scheduled to open in early 2024, this repurposed, renovated historic building will serve as a dynamic destination for residents and attracting visitors from all over the region, reflecting the energy and diversity of Jersey City’s burgeoning arts community.
The Centre Pompidou will provide its expertise to create an ambitious program emphasizing education via hands-on artistic and cultural experiences, with a community component central to Jersey City’s ambitious and inclusive vision for the future, making the Centre Pompidou Jersey City a promising multidisciplinary art laboratory for cultural and educational programming.
With the addition of exclusive exhibitions created with the modern and contemporary art masterpieces from the Paris Centre Pompidou’s collection, as well as tailor-made and diversified events at the crossroads of all disciplines, the Centre Pompidou Jersey City’s cultural agenda (to be revealed at a later date) will offer an effervescent fusion of art and ideas.
In 2018, the Fulop administration acquired the Pathside Building, located in the heart of one of the busiest transportation hubs in the tri-state area, and a 15-minute PATH train ride from both Lower Manhattan and Newark Penn Station (which is also being restored).
The City purchased the 58,000 square-feet building (5400 square meters). While the building was slated for residential units at the time, the Fulop Administration made a commitment to instead try to optimize the building to establish Jersey City as a larger destination for the arts.
The international partnership being announced today is the culmination of a strategic plan and cultural partner search by the creative consultants Jersey City had hired in 2019, OMA New York, led by partner Jason Long.
This effort included both engagement with the Jersey City community and discussions with a number of potential partners both within and outside the US. Centre Pompidou’s history as an institution dedicated to multiple forms of contemporary art and culture, its dedication to education and cultural organizations match Jersey City’s and the community’s ambitions for the building.
In the coming months, OMA /Jason Long will work with Jersey City and the Centre Pompidou on the design of the Centre Pompidou × Jersey City within the historic Pathside Building.
Developed in close collaboration with local creatives and residents, inviting international art professionals as well as prospecting for emerging talents from all walks of life, the Centre Pompidou Jersey City future program hopes to appeal to the broadest and most diverse possible audiences, offering a unique form of cultural outreach in the City, the State and far beyond, to address today’s changes in society, perfectly embodied by Jersey City’s exciting transformations.
Image courtesy of OMA.