Director of the Palais de Tokyo, Marc-Olivier Wahler, plans to open temporary art spaces in Los Angeles and Paris in 2012 after his six year term comes to end.
Chalet Hollywood will open at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), taking over one third of it’s exhibition space. It will be entirely funded by private benefactors and willl act as an exclusive members-only club with opening hours from 6pm – 2am.
Boulevard Raspail on Paris’s Left Bank will house Chalet Society which is being created in partnership with Artevia, a cultural advisory firm.
“My idea is to reflect on whether an art centre is the best structure for showing art and as a place of production. Chalet Society and Chalet Hollywood will be a laboratory to test this hypothesis for the benefit of young artists, and [to examine] how to use and share knowledge,” Wahler says.
He places importance on the temporary nature of the spaces, “to create a story and a specific dynamism”. Wahler believes that each Chalet responds to a specific social needs. There is talk of a third Chalet being opened next year in Marrakech in collaboration with the artists’ residency centre Dar Al-Ma’mûn.
