CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux
CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, formerly the Centre d’arts plastiques contemporains (CAPC), is a museum of modern art established in 1973 in Bordeaux, France.
In 1983 the institution became the CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (Bordeaux Museum of Contemporary Art). The museum was formally opened on 17 May 1984. During the 1980s the museum put on many exhibitions and events, and also arranged exhibitions in California, Spain and then throughout Europe and Japan with the exhibition of the Sonnabend Collection.
American artist Keith Haring had a major exhibition in the museum in 1985, creating a series of ten large paintings, The Ten Commandments, to fit exactly the nave of the museum building. The ten paintings are now part of the Keith Haring Foundations’ collection and have been displayed on many other locations since. Haring did leave the museum a mural painting inside the elevator shaft.[citation needed] In 1990 the CAPC Musée and the arc en rêve architecture center occupied the entire warehouse, which was reopened after renovations in June 1990. In the years that followed the museum has steadily added to its collection, with assistance from the state. The focus was enlarged from Europe and North America to cover work from Asia, South America and emerging countries. In 2003 the museum was designated a National Museum of France.
The CAPC museum presents permanent exhibitions of its collection and organizes large temporary exhibitions on specific themes. It often features artists who work in the Bordeaux region. Since 2000 the museum has frequently been used for exhibitions of music, architecture, cinema, literature or design, and has often put on exhibitions of popular art.