11/01/2002

François Pinault, whose art collection includes 1,000 works by such artists as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Amedeo Modigliani, Joan Miró, Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney, has picked Japanese architect Tadao Ando to design a new museum in Paris to be called the François Pinault Contemporary Art Foundation. It will house the largest private art collection in France and is due to open in early 2006. At a cost of $ 140 million (€ 157 million), the museum will be equal in size to the Pompidou Center and twice as big as the Guggenheim Bilbao. The museum will be built on a disused Renault car-factory site on the southwestern edge of Paris. French media predict it will transform the rundown suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt in the same way the Guggenheim Museum revitalized Bilbao in northern Spain. Starting life as a timber merchant, Pinault is now worth more than $ 4 billion. His vast business empire includes Christie's auction house, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Samsonite and the magazine “Le Point”. (James Goulder)