The house of Chanel has upped its commitment to the Grand Palais, with a five-year deal to stage shows there that will finance an exciting new series of exhibitions, revealed Monday in Paris.
 

Chanel has increased its backing to €30 million over the next half decade, up from €25 million in the five-year period preceding the Grand Palais closure for extensive renovations.
 
“The Grand Palais is a great machine for fabricating dreams,” said Chanel fashion president Bruno Pavlovsky, noting that Karl Lagerfeld first began staging catwalk displays there in 2005.

One of Europe’s greatest architectural jewels, the Grand Palais reopened this summer after a three-year hiatus in time for the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, when two enormous stands were squeezed into the soaring hall. Requiring a special dispensation from the city of Paris to allow in 11,000 spectators, one thousand more than the normal legal maximum.
 
“There were so many fans for the judo matches that those in the highest row could touch the glass ceiling,” marveled Grand Palais president Didier Fusilier, in a tour of the upper galleries.
 
Since the Games, Chanel staged its latest women’s ready-to-wear collection in September in the Grand Palais and will stage all haute couture and pret-a-porter shows there through to the end of the decade. Its two “travelling” shows, Métiers d’Art and cruise, will continue their caravanserais to exotic foreign locations.
 
The grand hall’s next fashion display is “Du Coeur à la Main: Dolce & Gabbana”, a love letter to Italian culture, the source of inspiration for this retrospective on the work of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. Curated by art historian Florence Muller, this 12-week show debuts on January 10.
 
Prior to that, the Grand Palais will unveil a giant installation of work by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota in an upper gallery. While on the main floor, workmen are busy putting the finishing touches to its annual three-week Christmas ice rink.
 
“We had great discussions with Chanel and Bruno Pavlovsky that Chanel could accompany all this program. We hadn’t hardly a euro, so most of this could not happen without Chanel’s support,” stressed Fusilier in a presentation at lunch.
 
The Grand Palais’ reopening partly coincides with the closure of the Center Pompidou, due to start a €400 million renovation next September. As a result, the Pompidou will stage shows in multiple other exhibition spaces, staring next June with pop culturalists Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely and Pontus Hultén here. Chanel is a sponsor of that show, and off “Art Brut”, an exhibition of that art movement based on the gift of Bruno Decharme’s private collection; and “Aux Frontières du Dessin”, an immense expo of the Pompidou’s unique collection of sketches, that emphasize “the spontaneity of gesture.” 
 

“The Pompidou’s construction will take five years, so we plan to stage shows in many other places,” noted the Center’s assistant director Jeanne Brun. Even as far as the U.S., and a new art space in Jersey City, Brun revealed.
 
As part of the Grand Palais renovation, several new giant lifts were installed, without which it would have been impossible to stage the Paralympics. Thanks to the overhaul, climate control meant temperatures could be kept at 18 degrees during the Games, aided by hi-tech window openings to allow hot air to exit.
 
As part of the immense complex, a newly renovated Palais des Enfants is designed to lure in the new generation, while an expo on Artificial Intelligence will target the inner nerd among us all. Before artist Mohamed El Khatib stages an idiosyncratic show “Le Grand Palais de Ma Mère”, featuring a dozen old Renault 12s with roof racks, “since North Africans put all their baggage on top of their cars.”
 
While fashion will also be represented by style curator Olivier Saillard’s homage to his taxi driver mother’s wardrobe; and a giant installation by Eva Jospin, the French artist who has made runway show tapestries for the house of Dior.
 
Historically, the Grand Palais closed every summer. Not anymore, as Fusilier revealed a whole series of events called “Grand Palais d’Eté” for next June, July and August – including a “Grand Bal Paris-Rio”, led by two award-winning samba schools from Rio that will march up the Champs Élysées, and Vertige, a co-production with the Théâtre National de la Danse,  where tightrope walkers and 20 acrobats will stage a choreographed show on a high wire underneath the giant glass roof, for a “poetic dialogue with the sky and space.”

Followed in July by an “All World Waacking Battle 2vs2”, a festival starring dancer Josépha Madoki.
 
“We want the Grand Palais to be a center of joy, fun and fetes,” enthused Fusilier.
 
Karl would have approved.