FIAC--Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (Part 1 of 3)

FIAC is the Foire internationale d’art contemporain (International fair of contemporary art), an annual art extravaganza in Paris.

Since the beginning of Year 4 here in Paris, we have wanted to visit the Grand Palais, one of Paris's monumental buildings along the Champs-Elysées.  

The Grand Palais was completed in 1900 and was featured in Paris's Universal Exposition that year.  Since its inauguration, it has served as an exhibition hall and museum.  In addition, during WWI and WWII, it variously served as a training post, a hospital and a depot for trucks, jeeps and tanks.  

The Grand Palais is a gigantic building in the Beaux-Arts style, which features a soaring glass barrel-vaulted roof that allows the sun to flood the exhibition hall with natural light.

Here are some facts about the Grand Palais:

• The exhibition hall is a large rectangle, about 240 meters long--about 2-1/2 American football fields. 
• The glass dome is 45 meters high, nearly 150 feet.
• Modern techniques and materials were used to construct the building: glass, iron, stone, reinforced concrete and more than 9,000 tons of steel. 
• For the past decade, the roof has been home to beehives to promote biodiversity.

Below is a photographic tour of the Grand Palais' exhibition hall, showing both the hall and the building's architectural detail.  

The exhibition hall 

The Grand Staircase (and the back of Jean-Claude's melon)

Today, the Grand Palais is used for all sorts of events.  The artistic salons of the Grand Palais are used for temporary art exhibitions like the current Toulouse-Lautrec and El Greco exhibitions.  The Grand Palais' exhibition hall hosts horse shows, Chanel fashion shows and expositions like FIAC.  In the future, the Grand Palais will host the fencing and taekwondo competitions of the 2024 Summer Olympics being hosted in Paris.  

We were happy to finally visit the Grand Palais.  It is an architectural and artistic marvel.  Seeing the FIAC exposition there was an added benefit.  We especially appreciated the contract between old and new, as in the photo below. 

Next Up:  Contemporary art inside the Grand Palais