The “suspense” will soon end. While only Bordeaux, Caen and Strasbourg remained in competition to host the Jean Claude Gandur museum, Strasbourg was informed that it was not selected. The businessman (75 years old) who turned to France to house his art collection after the failure of his partnership with the Geneva Museum of Art and History in 2016 wants to move quickly and see its museum before 2030.
Also, before formalizing the name of the chosen city, the collector first wants to ensure that all legal uncertainties on the ground are resolved. Strasbourg's application – which proposed land in the Deux-Rives sector – was not accepted because “the proposed land bases make it extremely difficult to carry out the program within a reasonable time frame”according to the Foundation.
Jean Claude Gandur wants to build his museum in the middle of a large park outside the city, based on the model of the Beyeler foundation in Basel. This place will be entirely financed at its own expense, with a forecast budget of more than 50 million euros. “It will not only be a museum, but a place open to everyone, from children to seniors, with multidisciplinary activities such as dance, artist residencies, and mediation” he specified to Arts Journalin October 2023. Its collection will be exhibited in rotation and temporary exhibitions will also be organized with loans from other museums.
The Gandur Foundation for Art houses a collection of 3,700 works of art, which grows by approximately 100 to 150 objects per year. It brings together paintings, sculptures, art furniture, antique objects as well as pre-Columbian works. Its collection consists of Greek, Egyptian and Roman antiquities. It also includes numerous works from the 20th century, particularly those from the post-war period with a predilection for abstraction (Fautrier, Soulages, CoBra) and the movements of Narrative Figuration, New Realism and Supports/Surfaces. Concerning the 21st century, the collection includes more than 400 works of contemporary African art and its diaspora.
