The Pompidou has reopened after a year of renovation with a series of shows, including one called “Le Temps, vite!” (Time, quickly!). The day I saw it, there was a long line of people waiting in the building’s new cafeteria, now located above the bookstore in the enormous entrance hall. Having no time to spare, I skipped lunch and went directly to the sixth floor. It was only on leaving that I discovered four hours had passed without my realizing it at all, save for some lightheadedness due to hunger.

As it happens, this episode illustrated perfectly one of the principal themes of “Le Temps,

Although the number of visitors may not be the best criterion for judging an exhibition, the crowds that made their way to the Bibliothèque Nationale to see the Magnum photo agency’s “Essais sur le monde” (Essays on the world) are worthy of note, and not only in quantitative terms. For these were visibly not the usual tourists “doing” Magnum between Beaubourg and the Louvre, or professional gallery-goers popping in between the Marais and avenue Matignon, but members of an elusive social category that all curators doubtless dream of attracting: the general public. They came alone, in pairs,