Who are we? - Frac Centre-Val de Loire

What is the Frac? Our missions A museum to rebuild reality Team

What is the Frac?

The Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain (Frac), created in 1982 on the basis of a State-Regions partnership, are institutions whose mission is to build up public collections of contemporary art, to disseminate them to all audiences and to invent forms of awareness of current creation. Since 2017, the Frac have been awarded a label by the Ministry of Culture, crowning years of artistic and professional commitment to the general interest.

It constitutes recognition, protection and a sign of trust. This label secures the collections and enshrines the Frac’s fundamental missions of support for contemporary creation, transmission and mediation for access to contemporary art by the widest possible audience.

The Frac Centre-Val de Loire is one of the so-called “second generation” regional contemporary art funds which, at the beginning of the 2010s, acquired major infrastructures to develop their dissemination and awareness-raising missions.

A few dates

1982

Creation of the Fonds Régionaux d’Art Contemporain on the initiative of the Ministry of Culture in partnership with the regional councils

1983

Creation of the Frac Centre-Val de Loire

1997

Director: Marie-Ange Brayer

1999

1st edition of ArchiLab, international architecture laboratory in Orléans, on the site of the Subsistances militaires, by M.-A. Brayer and F. Migayrou

2004-2005

Expositions consacrées à la collection, Mori Art Museum de Tokyo

2006

International competition for the rehabilitation of the Subsistances militaires site and the establishment of the Frac Centre-Val de Loire
Winning architects: Jakob + MacFarlane
Co-winners: Electronic Shadow

Exhibitions dedicated to the collection, Barbican Art Gallery, London

2008

Collection exhibitions, Fine Arts Museum, Taipei

2013

Inauguration of Turbulences – Frac Centre-Val de Loire and the 9th edition of ArchiLab
30 years of the FRACs

2015

Director: Abdelkader Damani

2017

First edition of the Orléans Architecture Biennial

2018

Exhibition at the Bruges Triennial

2019

First edition of the Rabat Biennial of Contemporary Art

Second edition of the Orleans Architecture Biennial

2022

Third edition of the Biennale of Art and Architecture in Vierzon

Frac Centre Val-de-Loire © Martin Argyroglo

Les Turbulences FRAC Centre - ∏ Jakob + MacFarlane -N Borel Photo - 650

Les Turbulences, Frac Centre Val-de-Loire © Martin Argyroglo

Our missions

The missions of the Frac are to build up a collection of contemporary art, focusing on current creation, its dissemination and awareness-raising in the regions, in France and abroad.

Each year, the Fracs distribute several hundred works from their collections “in motion” through loans, which are major vectors of their awareness-raising activities.

Each Fonds régional d’art contemporain thus weaves a unique network of partners and dissemination and awareness-raising activities at the regional, national and international levels, which for thirty-five years has contributed to cultural development and the emergence of new territories.

In 1991, the institution oriented its collection towards a transversal questioning, an open field of reflection on the architecture of tomorrow by bringing together contemporary art and experimental architecture from 1950 to the present day.

The Frac Centre-Val de Loire’s collection now represents ninety-four artists and architects. It includes some one thousand architectural models, one thousand artists’ works and more than sixteen thousand drawings. It is endowed with
exceptional collections, thanks to numerous donations.