Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). End of the cultural and artistic year for Toulouse with the reopening of the Château d’Eau, on November 22, then the Musée des Augustins, on December 19. Created in 1974 by the photographer Jean Dieuzaide (1921-2003), the Château d’Eau opened the ball of inaugurations after eighteen months of closure and twelve months of work entrusted to the Toulouse agency Cousy Architectures. Housed in the former Eaux de la Garonne lifting station on the banks of the river, it was the first municipal establishment in France dedicated to photography.
“The Château d’Eau had not undergone major construction since the end of the 1980s”recalls Magali Blénet, director of the establishment. “The priorities therefore focused on bringing the spaces into conformity both in terms of accessibility and conservation and renovation of the classified site and the strong constraints, so that the public understands them better and that the exhibition spaces are adapted to new forms of display and developments in photographic creation”she specifies. Cost of the work: 4.2 million euros, financed largely by Toulouse Town Hall, with the participation of the Occitanie regional council amounting to €500,000 and that of the State to €16,000. Another project valued at 2 million euros is planned for the exterior renovation of the Water Tower and its fence.
Already, the inaugural exhibition “Sophie Zénon, L’humus du monde”, which retraces thirty years of creation, is displayed on the first two levels of the high brick tower by Jean-Antoine Raynaud, with the hydraulic machinery designed by Jean Abadie to supply the public fountains on both banks. The last part extends outside, in the wing set up around thirty meters under an arch of the Pont-Neuf, where the library is also located. The entrance formerly inside the tower has been moved to the garden pavilion located at the rear, now devoted to the ticket office and the bookstore-boutique. Which freed up exhibition spaces. The new graphic identity is signed by the Swedish graphic designer Greger Ulf Nilson, in collaboration with Snøhetta.
Sophie Zénon’s exhibition embodies the continuity of a program dedicated to contemporary creation while marking a greater openness to collaborations with other institutions in the City and the Region, both in terms of loans of works put in dialogue with those of the artist and in the edition of the book designed by Éditions Païen based in Ariège. No permanent space or picture rail, however, has been provided for the collection of photographs of the Château d’Eau nor the Dieuzaide collection purchased in 2016 by the City for 450,000 euros and kept in the Municipal Archives. “We may be required to hold exhibitions as we did for the centenary of his birth”underlines Magali Blénet who is now officiating alone in the programming after the departure of Christian Caujolle (1953-2025), artistic advisor to the Château d’Eau from 2021 to 2024, with whom she co-signed last year the exhibition “Ouvrir les yeux” at Les Abattoirs, devoted to the photo collections of the latter and those of the Château d’Eau.
