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A grand new art gallery is to be built in Caen after the Norman town won a contest among seven French cities to host a permanent home for the collection of Jean-Claude Gandur, a Swiss billionaire.
Gandur, 75, chose the seat of William the Conqueror in a run-off against Bordeaux as the the site of an architecturally ambitious structure that the local government hopes will put Caen on the cultural map in the way that the Guggenheim did for Bilbao in Spain.
Gandur, who has amassed an eclectic collection ranging from antiquities to one of the biggest assemblages of post-war European paintings, opened the competition after voters in Geneva rejected his plan for a museum there.
Gandur next to a Jean Fautrier painting at the Fabre museum in Montpellier in 2011
PASCAL GUYOUT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A competition for the design is to be launched,
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