Palace. “A new breath, a new project” : Sunday June 15, the Minister of Higher Education and Research, Philippe Baptiste, traced a CAP for the future palace of discovery in the columns of World. Problem: this CAP is already fixed, formalized in a museum proposal on which the teams of the Palais de la Découvert have been working for five years, and a scenographic development imagined by a wide group of companies (led by the Phileas agency) which must pass in the works phase next October.
“We are a bit stressed”we breathe in one of the companies in this group, a few days after the brutal dismissal of Bruno MAQUART, president and director of Universcience-the establishment bringing together the City of Sciences and Industry (CSI) and the Palais de la Découverte-, Thursday, June 12. The latter pays the announcement to the press of an exhibition devoted to artificial intelligence in a gallery with the disputed assignment between Universcience, which was to make it the temporary exhibition space of the Palais de la Découverte, and Le Grandpalais-RMN.
Like the programming of this exhibition, the content of the future museography of the Palais de la Découverte has been publicly known for a long time, and has to give rise, from October, to one of the largest museum projects in the capital. “” Everything is encrypted, the requests for authorization for work are filed at the DRAC and we are in the selection of companies for the start of the school year, explains a member of the project management, selected by competition, in December 2022. Universcience and the project management group do not work at all in their corner. We have regular meetings with Le Grandpalais-RMN and François Chatillon, the architect of the Grand Palais. Nothing is hidden. »»
A transfer to the City of Sciences?
This important public market, which entered its last phase, does not seem to weigh in the reflections of the Minister of Higher Education and the Minister of Culture, both evoking a building issue. In hollow, the intervention of the Minister evokes the meeting of the two universcience entities on the Villette site, whose rehabilitation still under study could exceed one billion euros. The museographic content created by the agents of the Palais de la Découverte also seems to be on the hot seat, with the mention of a new direction “ where artificial intelligence can play a fundamental role ”. “” They (the agents of Universcience) did not work for nothing. It will enrich the future proposal ”continues the Minister to the World.
This sudden turnaround does not surprise certain executives of the scientific establishment: since the 1980s, attempted eviction of the Palais de la Découverte have returned regularly. “This is the reason why when we closed in 2021, I told myself that we would never return to the Palais d’Antin, estimates one of them. Already shortly before this closure, the Grandpalais-RMN began to complain, dragged for each authorization that we asked for. »»
Despite fifteen brand new galleries, three halls and the nave, the need for additional public spaces is felt on the side of Grandpalais-RMN. While a good part of the galleries is occupied by a Pompidou center under construction, the establishment must maximize the rental of spaces in order to reimburse the 150 million euros borrowed to carry out the work.
