The Pipe Show
The Centre Pompidou has a huge collection. The goal of the project was to find new, engaging ways to temporarily highlight specific artworks of the permanent collection and give visitors more information about them.
The current display of the Centre Pompidou permanent collection consists of white walls and a small label next to the artworks with basic information. The research pointed out that visitors considered this display too
neutral. They would have loved to receive traditional information (technique, materials...) more engagingly. Also, they were interested in some anecdotes about the artworks.
As a new ironic way to replace the label, our team chose the architectural feature of Centre Pompidou’s building: the pipe. We turned this element into an amusing concept for the project, the Pipe Show.
Every two months selected artworks of collection, related to a particular topic the curators would like to highlight, will have the ‘pipe display’, alternatively to the label.
Instead of reading the description of the artworks, visitors will have to look for the information by exploring the pipes. As a result, they will engage with the artworks much more bodily (still without touching it).
Designed in different sizes, the pipes will give the information in multisensorial ways. Visitors will discover short videos of some anecdotes related to an installation, smell perfumes which remind the atmosphere of a painting, touch the texture of the material a sculpture is made of...
