Thirty years and a whole world. On January 31, 1977, sudden appearance in full Paris of a hallucinated multicoloured mushroom dedicated to the contemporary art made scandal. Wednesday, it is in an environment definitely more pacified than Jacques Chirac will chair the ceremony of birthday of the Pompidou center, third monument more visited France, behind the Eiffel tower and Louvre, with 5 million entries per annum! No fireworks, but the Swiss woman Pipilotti Rist will present a video work on the piazza. Consequently occasion, the stage of Picasso, Directs or Matisse (“modern” art) reopens with a new fixing, after closing for work. That of “contemporary” art will follow at the beginning of April. Wanted by George Pompidou, missing three years earlier, the center was inaugurated by a Giscard d'Estaing manifestly reserved, more inclined with “art fireman” of the XIXe century than to the sculptures of Niki de Saint-Phalle than appreciated his predecessor. The disappearance of the lanes of one of the oldest districts of the capital, provocative architecture, the place given to an art still mécompris, all was to shock.

Bar. In truth, it was a salutary revolution. The center contributed to reconcile France with its own art moving. One pains to imagine how much Picasso was still rejected, this matter of bar making antienne: “His tables, my son could make similar. ” As for the museums, they were cut off as guards from the classic art. Alive Picasso, they had not thought of buying its works, more than those of one Van Gogh with orée of the century. To protect a contemporary art if discussed, the center profited from a new mode of freedom, become since a model. This statute became that of different the great establishments, Louvre, Orsay or even the Opera of Paris.

Metz. With the variation of the police headquarters, Beaubourg could establish its own programming, enrich its collections and manage its personnel. It could call foreign conservatives, to start with the Swede Pontus Hulten or the German Werner Spies. Exposing as well painting as literature, cinema or music, there remains the only institution in the world to gather a museum, a public library and a cineclub. At the end of 2008, it will open in Metz. But Beaubourg is confronted with hundreds of places of contemporary art, to start with the Palate of Tokyo and the new demonstrations with the Large Palate. In the world, where the centers of contemporary art make florès, competition is sharper still. Little engaged in the project with mercantile connotation Abou Dhabi, the center projects an opening to Shanghai. At thirty years, Beaubourg makes the small ones. Manner of moving the Utopia?