The museum now has a different layout, and is presenting a new hang of the modern collections. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Bernard Blistène – This presentation marks the beginning of major alteration work, offering a more comprehensible circuit for visitors, and creating new exhibition areas. The public now enter the museum by level 5, and leave by level 4, thus following the progression of the history of art by moving from the modern to the contemporary period. With this reorientation, the sequences in the circuit are easier to understand – an essential point being that the simplified...

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The museum now has a different layout, and is presenting a new hang of the modern collections. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Bernard Blistène – This presentation marks the beginning of major alteration work, offering a more comprehensible circuit for visitors, and creating new exhibition areas. The public now enter the museum by level 5, and leave by level 4, thus following the progression of the history of art by moving from the modern to the contemporary period. With this reorientation, the sequences in the circuit are easier to understand – an essential point being that the simplified layout of the rooms now integrates a mediation area as well. This new look is the prelude to major alterations that involve opening new exhibition areas of around 500 m2 for contemporary art in 2016.

When does modern art begin and when does it become contemporary?
BB - As the American philosopher Arthur Danto subtly pointed out, "modern art" can mean many different things: the art created by artists during a certain period, "modernity" or art responding to a certain idea of the modern, or "modernism", associated with the idea of progress and based on a form of necessary self-criticism. Depending on the historical, aesthetic and geographical context, the definition of modernity and modernism can vary. We generally consider that there was a changeover during the 1960s, when many movements turned the page of modernist popular opinion, and refused to consider their approach as part of its overall narrative. We have thus chosen to situate the presentation of the modern collections in the period between 1905 and 1965.

What kind of history of modern art did you want to write for this new presentation?
BB - Every presentation, and through it every possible reading of the history of art, is conditioned by the collection. "Modernités Plurielles" had the merit of revealing some little-known sections of this collection. I want to pay tribute to its curator, Catherine Grenier, for having exhibited them. At the same time, the hang here has the virtue of showing that numerous moments in international modernity were little or never represented. Unless we believe in the dream of the universal museum, these absences should not be considered as lacunae. Each museum consists of the singularity of its own history; its collections are the incontrovertible proof. As a result, the collections of the Musée National d'Art Moderne consist of groups built up with each new acquisition, whether these are purchases decided by the curators or major donations, particularly those from artists or their heirs, to whom we owe so much. This accounts for the admirable depth of the Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Delaunay, Laurens, Kupka, Duchamp, Picabia, Breton and Dubuffet collections, among many others. Look at the rich variety of the photograph collections, which are constantly increasing – Brancusi, Brassaï, Man Ray, Cartier-Bresson and so on. Look at the extraordinary collection of films. Look at the breadth of the architecture and design collection, started 25 years ago on the initiative of that exceptional man, Dominique Bozo. These landmarks give the collection all its character. They reflect a certain history of modernity – a history that is gloriously cosmopolitan, particularly that of Paris, the "capital of the arts", made up of contributions from artists and creators from all over the world, whose collections are held in trust– as witness the rooms devoted to Constructivism, Dada and Surrealism, kinetic art, informal art and even the early beginnings of the tabula rasa represented by the art of the early Sixties. In this respect, the variety of the collections is extraordinary. It means that we can look back at the high points of modernity while reflecting on its complexity. This observation has guided our approach to this presentation, organised into historic sequences, which endeavours to give a clear, legible, and even educational picture of genealogies, transitions, crossings and points of contact.

Where modern and contemporary art are concerned, we always hesitate to speak of masterpieces and yet this collection contains many icons of 20th century art. Where do they stand in this hang? 
BB - To talk of "masterpieces" is always a perilous and even paradoxical affair. At its opening, the Centre Pompidou-Metz tried to highlight the ambiguity of this kind of thinking. Likewise, the idea of "icons" needs to be handled with care. Because in my view, modern art is underpinned above all by "thinking machines" – look at the entire room devoted to Marcel Duchamp! We must not forget that modern art is based on what Bertolt Brecht called "intellectual emotion": that effect of distance and reflexivity typical of what is modern. So we should speak of iconic works, rather – works that are representative of a particular moment; nodal works, turning points that can shed light on the history of an artist or a movement, together with their "immediate surroundings" – their "before" and "after", and their "side issues". And from this point of view, the collection offers the museum's remarkable teams endless prospects.

What themes can visitors follow to find their way through this circuit? 
BB - The museum has a duty to pursue its mission and aim at audiences in all their diversity. To help them understand the history of modern art, we need to exhibit the output of artists who have marked its course. The major landmarks of the collection thus occupy a prime position, on a permanent basis. But this is not incompatible with a more in-depth approach to the modern period designed for the more initiated – on the contrary! To reconcile these needs, we have devised a circuit whose backbone consists of major reference points. So we are offering a journey through modern movements, starting with Fauvism and Henri Matisse. We can't cover the history of historical avant-garde without factoring in the shock produced by the "Cages aux fauves" ("wild beast cage") in 1905, with works to illustrate it. Laterally, like so many essential asides, vanishing points or short cuts, we have laid out more specific spaces focusing on unusual but crucial figures and movements, like Lettrism, to which an entire room is devoted for the first time in the museum's history. Cobra, Fluxus and Azimuth are also present. As regards architecture and design, apart from the rooms dedicated to Rationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, we are paying tribute to Jean Prouvé and in the neighbouring room, to the "Spatialisms" of the 1950s.

For the first time, rooms are dedicated to "figures" in the history of art who are not artists but critics, historians and theorists. Why?
BB - Because we need to restore them to their key position in this period, when many demanded a rewriting or even a revision of history. We have decided to introduce small exhibition-dossiers scattered along the circuit, dealing with issues common to all the works. Designed as study and research areas entrusted to our erudite and perceptive museum teams, and soon academics as well, these modules will be renewed twice a year. The first are devoted to the great "go-betweens": those who helped to promote and interpret modern works. They naturally include historians and critics. To choose the figures we wanted to honour, we turned to our collection and the exceptional documentary archives in the Bibliothèque Kandinsky. Each of these exhibition-dossiers, which take various formats, mingle documents and archives with the works of artists these go-betweens felt close to, thus enabling us to appreciate the variety of their different passions, which went far beyond schools, styles and dogmas.

What are the strong points of the Centre Pompidou collection? 
BB - The collection has remarkable depth, diversity and density, with over 100,000 pieces of all kinds and disciplines, opening out possibilities for endless exploration, from the most iconic works to the rarest possible document. This scope encourages us to question the complexity of the history and provide a wide range of interpretations. I like to say that the history of art should be constantly reinterpreted as our knowledge and experience deepen. Another strong point of the collection is the ability of the curator teams of the Musée National d’Art Moderne to have made intelligent choices and stayed alive to modern and living creation alike, thus making it possible to re-assess entire areas of an often partial and selective reading of art. A collection like this is a matter of commitment! This is also reflected, at the same time as this new historical presentation, in the impressive, constantly renewed contemporary hang on level 4, "Une histoire", and the work undertaken in our new Galerie de Photographies.

New acquisitions are given plenty of coverage in this new hang. How did you choose to present them? 
BB – They are not isolated like "trophies", but form an integral part of the circuit, and are well documented. The rotation principle now established for works makes it possible to enlighten visitors on the reasons for choices which, as I cannot stress enough, are the results of a collective process. We need to show that a collection is constantly in a state of movement and change, even in the historical area, where acquisitions are less frequent, of course. We also need to highlight new fields for investigation, in line with a now more global approach to the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Which work are you most impatient to see again on the walls of the museum? 
BB – I am deeply grateful to Guy Cogeval, the Chairman and CEO of the Musée d’Orsay, for having agreed to a special presentation here of a masterpiece of pictorial invention: Luxe, calme et volupté by Matisse, a key work of 1904-1905 received in lieu of tax, which we had deposited at the Musée d’Orsay. In many respects, this is the painting that introduced many of us to modern art. I also salute the restoration work which now enables us to see Barnett Newman's Shining Forth again after so many years. And of course, we are proud and delighted to see some "unknown masterpieces" appear on our walls, such as Balthus' Grande Composition au corbeau, which recently entered the collection thanks to the determination of one of our curators!

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