PARIS — The Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris has closed for renovations designed to double the areas accessible to the public and add new facilities, including a documentation and research center dedicated to the couturier and his partner Pierre Bergé.
Its last exhibition, “The Flowers of Yves Saint Laurent,” closed on May 4 and the museum is not expected to reopen until fall 2027.
In an interview with WWD, Madison Cox, president of the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, said the transformation, spearheaded by German-born architect Annabelle Selldorf, will create a new circular flow inside the building by opening previously inaccessible areas, including Bergé’s office.
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Until now exhibitions culminated in Saint Laurent’s studio on the upper floor of the museum, obliging visitors to backtrack toward the exit.
“There will be exhibition spaces on both floors,” Cox said. “They can either be joined together, or they can be two separate spaces, and so there will no longer be this idea of a cul-de-sac.”
The budget for the renovation is 12.5 million euros, to be financed entirely through loans — a relatively small sum for such an ambitious overhaul, he reckoned. “We’re being very modest and trying to be very parsimonious,” Cox said.
The upgrade was necessary because the museum was outgrowing its premises.
Located at 5 Avenue Marceau, home to Saint Laurent’s couture house since 1974, it housed a large portion of the brand’s archives. On the clothing side alone, they include 8,000 pieces of haute couture, 3,100 ready-to-wear items and 19,000 accessories.
Then there are 55,000 fashion sketches, more than 43,000 in-house documents such as collection boards, some 130,000 photographs and 4,500 magazines — as well as numerous other documents. “We still continue to acquire pieces, and there’s going to be this issue about where we can store them,” Cox said.
After longtime YSL muse Betty Catroux donated more than 350 pieces from her private collection to the museum, the ready-to-wear collection was catalogued and moved to a warehouse near Angoulême in the southwest of France. Meanwhile, objects ranging from hat forms to old mannequins were stored in a facility in a suburb of Paris.
“I hope, one day, hopefully in the next five years, to be able to have the second phase where all that will be reassembled,” said Cox, who would like to stock everything in or near Paris.
“Any collection of any sort, if it’s not readily available to researchers, to the curatorial team, the conservation team, they become sort of lost objects — not lost, but somewhat forgotten. And one of the great aspects about Avenue Marceau was that everything was right there. It was all housed in one physical space,” he added.
A Multifaceted Couple
A renowned landscape gardener, Cox had worked with Selldorf on the renovation of a 1920s house in Marfa, Texas, and said he admired her work for institutions such as Neue Galerie, the museum founded by Ronald Lauder, and the Frick Collection — both housed in private mansions built in the early 20th century in New York City.
For the Saint Laurent project, her New York-based firm Selldorf Architects is partnering with Studio La Boétie in Paris.
The Avenue Marceau building underwent a first transformation to reopen as the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in September 2017, less than three weeks after the death of Bergé, who worked tirelessly to create a permanent home for the work of the couturier who was his partner in life and business.
Since then it has welcomed close to 1 million visitors, and Cox believes the expanded venue will draw even bigger crowds. “We won’t be able to triple the visitors, but I hope we’ll be able to at least double them,” he said.
The new library will be an “active and engaging place” that gives researchers, fashion historians and professionals, students and aficionados access to archives and documents pertaining to every aspect of the duo’s lives.
On display in Bergé’s office will be his portrait by French painter Bernard Buffet, as well as Andy Warhol’s screen-print portrait of Saint Laurent. But the space won’t be static: It will also host exhibitions focusing on the couple’s involvement in social causes.
Saint Laurent’s label emerged during the youthquake of the ‘60s, while Bergé was a powerhouse figure in French culture and politics. A businessman, collector and patron of the arts, he held many positions of influence: co-owner of French newspaper Le Monde, founder of AIDS charity Sidaction and president of the Paris Opera.
“In order for this institution to be significant, to have a raison d’être in the 21st century, it has to reflect, of course, the achievements of Yves Saint Laurent within the world of fashion and his contribution to fashion of the second half of the 20th century, but also the two of them and their contribution in so many different aspects than just fashion,” Cox said.
“All of that is also, I think, quite fascinating for younger generations. They may not have much interest in fashion, but they might be more interested in social changes of the ‘70s or the ‘80s, or what happened with the arrival of AIDS, or what happened with the arrival of different alternative lifestyles,” he added. “I’m hoping that the new Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris, when it reopens, will reflect all of these different aspects of the couple.”
All Change
Maxime Catroux, the daughter of Betty Catroux and the late interior decorator François Catroux, is steering the documentation and research center. An editor at French publisher Flammarion and member of the supervisory board of Le Monde Group, she was recently named vice president of the Yves Saint Laurent Museum.
“I thought it was important also to bring in a newer, younger generation, and Maxime, I’ve known a great part of my life and a great part of her life, and I have a great admiration for her,” Cox explained. “She’s also Yves Saint Laurent’s goddaughter.”
While the museum is closed, it will continue to develop exhibitions in other sites.
“Yves Saint Laurent and Photography,” featuring more than 80 works by the likes of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and William Klein, is set to open on July 7 during the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival.
Next January, the other permanent Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech will welcome an expanded version of “En Scène, Yves Saint Laurent,” an exhibition of costume and set designs for ballet, theater and music-hall that wrapped up in March at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio in Rome.
After collaborating with the Museum for Lace and Fashion in Calais, the French museum is mulling more joint exhibitions.
“We’ll be reaching out to other institutions, because I think that this idea of creating an exhibition that lasts six months or nine months with the catalogue, and then disappears, just seems not feasible economically,” Cox remarked.
As president of the Fondation Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, the 67-year-old has also ushered in big changes at the garden bought by Saint Laurent and Bergé in 1980. It has become one of the city’s main tourist attractions, drawing close to 1.5 million visitors a year.
Cox has introduced timed entrance tickets and a daily quota of 4,800 visitors, in addition to doubling the surface of the garden by opening up the grounds of the adjoining Villa Oasis, Saint Laurent’s former residence. The house itself can be visited via private tours with a maximum of five people.
The former pool has been torn down and replaced by a new exhibition space dedicated to the garden and its history. To mark the centennial of the Jardin Majorelle, Cox commissioned young Moroccan architect Hiba Bensalek to design the first of a series of temporary pavilions that will remain in place for two years.