By — Carey Reed Carey Reed Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/picasso-museum-reopens-artists-birthday-five-year-renovation Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Happy birthday, Picasso! Museum reopens after five-year renovation Arts Oct 25, 2014 6:50 PM EDT On the 133rd birthday of the celebrated Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, the Paris museum carrying his name reopened after a facelift five years in the making. “Give me a museum and I will fill it,” Picasso reportedly said during his lifetime. And so he did. The co-founder of cubism, who died on Apr. 8, 1973 in the south of France, created enough works in his lifetime to fill at least three eponymous museums in Spain and France. The Paris museum Musée Picasso Paris, which owns 5,000 Picasso pieces, closed in 2009 for the renovation, which cost about 52 million euros ($66 million) and tripled the size of the exhibition space over five floors. French President Hollande, Le Bon, Picasso’s daughter, Maya Widmaier Picasso, as well as the new Minister of Culture, Fleur Pellerin, were among those in attendance at the Paris museum reopening on Saturday. “You don’t build anything on nostalgia,” Hollande said, Reuters reported. “Pablo Picasso was a painter of the future, of hope, of conquests, he freed himself from the rules of the past. He was avant-garde. France is an avant-garde country,” he said. In June, controversy swirled in New York around Picasso’s tapestry painting “Le Tricorne” that hung in the Four Seasons restaurant, following a legal dispute between the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the restaurant’s owners. The piece was removed from the restaurant in September. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now By — Carey Reed Carey Reed Carey Reed assists in covering breaking and feature news for NewsHour Weekend's website. She also helps the NewsHour Weekend broadcast team in the production of the show. She is interested in the flourishing fields of data journalism and information visualization and recently graduated, with honors, from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. @careyereed
On the 133rd birthday of the celebrated Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, the Paris museum carrying his name reopened after a facelift five years in the making. “Give me a museum and I will fill it,” Picasso reportedly said during his lifetime. And so he did. The co-founder of cubism, who died on Apr. 8, 1973 in the south of France, created enough works in his lifetime to fill at least three eponymous museums in Spain and France. The Paris museum Musée Picasso Paris, which owns 5,000 Picasso pieces, closed in 2009 for the renovation, which cost about 52 million euros ($66 million) and tripled the size of the exhibition space over five floors. French President Hollande, Le Bon, Picasso’s daughter, Maya Widmaier Picasso, as well as the new Minister of Culture, Fleur Pellerin, were among those in attendance at the Paris museum reopening on Saturday. “You don’t build anything on nostalgia,” Hollande said, Reuters reported. “Pablo Picasso was a painter of the future, of hope, of conquests, he freed himself from the rules of the past. He was avant-garde. France is an avant-garde country,” he said. In June, controversy swirled in New York around Picasso’s tapestry painting “Le Tricorne” that hung in the Four Seasons restaurant, following a legal dispute between the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the restaurant’s owners. The piece was removed from the restaurant in September. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now