AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève is Geneva's pioneering home for living art, founded in 1974 as the first space dedicated to contemporary creation in French-speaking Switzerland. Over five decades it has launched emerging Swiss and international talents and staged the work of established figures, with a programme that spans installations, performance, film and the moving image.↗
While its landmark Plainpalais building undergoes a four-year renovation (2025–2029), the Centre has reimagined itself as L'Arcade, an intimate boutique-like gallery opening straight onto Rue de Chantepoulet, steps from the main train station. It is an unusually compact, experimental and accessible way to encounter cutting-edge contemporary art in the heart of the city.↗↗
A half-century at the edge of the avant-garde
Few institutions can claim to have shaped a region's relationship with contemporary art for fifty years, but the Centre has done exactly that. From its founding it became a high point for the international avant-garde of the 1970s and early 1980s, championing conceptual art, performance, Arte Povera and minimalist art and music. That adventurous, research-driven spirit still runs through today's programming under director Andrea Bellini.