Picasso Museum Names Five Teams for €55 Million Expansion

On September 11, 2026, the Musée National Picasso-Paris named five finalist teams for Picasso 2030, its privately financed sculpture garden, exhibition wing, and visitor-space overhaul. The choice will determine how one of the world’s richest Picasso sculpture collections meets the public, while the sale of four of eight authorized posthumous casts is expected to finance about €40 million of the reported €55 million cost.

 
 

Five Teams, and One Shortlist That Needs Correcting

The finalists are not five individual designers but five multidisciplinary groups pairing architects, heritage specialists, and landscape designers. The museum’s own September 11 announcement gives the following grouping:

• Antoine Dufour Architectes with Wagon Landscaping
• Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture with Pierre-Antoine Gatier and Florence Mercier
• NeM / Niney et Marca Architectes with RCR and Jacqueline Osty
• Francesca Torzo with Drubigny Architectes and Sarah Price Landscapes
• Stanton Williams with Atelier PNG and Vogt

That grouping matters because The Art Newspaper’s English-language report rearranges the final three teams. Its list omits RCR, places Francesca Torzo in the Stanton Williams entry, and then separates Drubigny Architectes and Sarah Price Landscapes as the fifth team. The museum’s announcement shows that Torzo, Drubigny, and Price form one team; Stanton Williams, Atelier PNG, and Vogt form another; and RCR belongs with NeM and Osty.

No design has won yet, and the shortlisted proposals have not been made public. An international jury chaired by museum president Cécile Debray is due to choose the winning team in January 2027.

 

The garden side of the Musée National Picasso-Paris at the Hôtel Salé. Photograph by DiscoA340 via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International; cropped.

 
 

An Art Project, Not Just a Building Project

Picasso 2030 has three connected parts. It will join the museum’s garden to the neighboring Square Léonor-Fini and place around ten Picasso bronzes in the resulting public landscape. It will add an approximately 800-square-meter wing for temporary exhibitions, and it will reorganize the Hôtel Salé’s ground floor and basement for ticketing, visitor reception, a bookstore, a café, education, and events.

The garden is the project’s artistic center. The museum’s collection overview counts 368 sculptures and three-dimensional works and describes its holdings as the world’s richest public Picasso collection. Moving a group of bronzes into a freely accessible garden changes not only capacity but encounter: visitors will be able to see sculpture before buying a museum ticket.

The plan also shifts emphasis within Picasso’s career. His paintings dominate popular recognition, while this project makes sculpture the institution’s public face. The museum has identified the four new casts intended for Paris, but it has not yet published the complete list of roughly ten bronzes planned for the garden.

The Jardin de l’Hôtel Salé–Léonor-Fini in the Marais. Photograph: Guilhem Vellut/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

 
 

The €50 Million and €55 Million Figures Do Not Match

The museum’s official competition page puts the project at €50 million. Coverage of the September 11 briefing, including the French edition of The Art Newspaper, gives €55 million. The official page still displays the lower figure and does not explain the €5 million difference.

Reported flow	What it funds
€40 million	Four posthumous casts bought by the DQ Art Foundation; proceeds are earmarked for Picasso 2030
€15 million	Campaign led by the Picasso museum’s foundation among French and international donors
€60 million	A separate Don Quixote Foundation donation for the Rijksmuseum’s Amsterdam sculpture garden

At the €55 million figure, the reported bronze transaction covers about 73 percent of the Paris project. The remaining €15 million matches the fundraising campaign described in the French report; at the museum’s older €50 million figure, the same sale would leave only €10 million. The budget difference is therefore material, not rounding.

The €60 million Amsterdam donation should not be added to Picasso 2030’s financing. In January, the Rijksmuseum announced that separate gift for developing the Don Quixote Pavilion and Garden. The €40 million reported in September is a purchase of four Picasso casts connected to the Paris project. The DQ Art Foundation bought the four Picasso casts, while the distinct Don Quixote Foundation made the €60 million garden donation.

 
 

Eight New Casts Mean Six Picasso Designs

The September disclosures describe eight bronzes produced after Picasso’s 1973 death, exceptionally authorized by his heirs and cast in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Four will remain in Paris: La Femme au jardin, Tête de femme, Buste de femme, and Petite fille sautant à la corde.

Four were reportedly sold to the DQ Art Foundation for display in Amsterdam: Tête de femme, Petite fille sautant à la corde, La Chèvre, and La Guenon et son petit. The Art Newspaper France lists six designs among the eight casts, while Le Monde reports that the eight bronzes derive from four originals.

“Posthumous bronze” also describes the object more accurately than “new Picasso sculpture.” The museum’s permanent records identify La Femme au jardin as welded, white-painted iron from spring 1930; La Chèvre as a mixed-media original plaster from 1950; and La Guenon et son petit as an October 1951 plaster construction incorporating ceramic and two toy cars. The new objects are bronze casts made from those designs, not original models handled in those materials by Picasso. That model-versus-cast distinction is fundamental to the history of bronze sculpture.

There is also a date conflict worth preserving rather than smoothing over. The English report labels La Chèvre “1952,” while the museum’s permanent object record dates the original assemblage to 1950. Because the report does not explain what its 1952 date denotes, 1950 is the supportable date for Picasso’s original model; 1952 should not be presented as the design date without qualification.

The museum and heirs have described the authorization as exceptional. They have not disclosed the new casts’ edition numbers, patinas, detailed foundry certificates, or contractual restrictions on later transfer. Those details matter because the casts are simultaneously objects for public display and the principal financing instrument for a national museum project.

 
 

The Road to the 2030 Opening

The museum announced Picasso 2030 in September 2025 and launched the international architecture and landscape competition on May 29, 2026. Applications closed July 6; the jury designated five candidates on September 7; and the museum publicly named them four days later. That separation of dates explains why the shortlist decision and its public announcement should not be treated as the same event.

The official calendar calls for selection in January 2027, an announcement by February, construction from 2028 while the museum remains open, and completion at the end of 2030. Télérama reported a 2031 finish on September 11, but the museum’s primary schedule says late 2030. The official date is the firmer one unless the institution revises it.

The Hôtel Salé, home of the Musée National Picasso-Paris. Photograph: Arthur Crbz/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

 
 

What Is Established Before the Designs Arrive

The museum’s announcement establishes five finalist teams, and the English-language shortlist misgroups three of them and drops RCR. The official project page establishes a €50 million estimate, while September reporting gives €55 million without an explanation for the increase. Current reporting establishes eight authorized posthumous casts from six Picasso designs, four for Paris and four sold for a reported €40 million; the Rijksmuseum’s separate €60 million donation is not part of that sum.

The winning design, the complete garden checklist, the final project budget, and the edition documentation for the new bronzes remain undisclosed. The museum’s current target is a January 2027 decision and a late-2030 opening without closing the Hôtel Salé during construction.