A year after opening, Almaty Museum of Arts (ALMA) has brought one of contemporary art’s best-known works to Kazakhstan: Christian Marclay’s The Clock, a 24-hour artwork assembled from thousands of film and television clips. The installation, jointly owned by Centre Pompidou, Tate, and the Israel Museum, marks the beginning of a long-term partnership between the Almaty museum and its Paris counterpart.
The Clock opened to the public on September 12 and will run through October 12. The work is being shown in Central Asia for the first time.
Marclay created it in 2010 from thousands of fragments of films and television programs showing clocks or referring to time. Together, they form exactly 24 hours of screen time synchronized with the real world. If a visitor watches The Clock in Almaty at 3:42 p.m., it is also 3:42 p.m. on screen.
In 2011, the work won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. A year later, it was jointly acquired by Centre Pompidou, Tate in London, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The Clock has since been shown at major museums around the world.
Four 24-hour screenings are scheduled in Almaty, on September 19 and 26, and October 3 and 10.
“Cooperation with Centre Pompidou is not a one-off event, but the beginning of a long story,” museum founder Nurlan Smagulov said in the museum’s announcement of the exhibition.
ALMA opened on September 12, 2025. At its core is Smagulov’s collection of more than 700 works of modern Kazakh art, assembled over the past three decades. It includes works by Salikhitdin Aitbayev, Sergey Kalmykov, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, and other leading Kazakh and Kazakhstan-based artists.
According to the museum, more than 460,000 people visited ALMA during its first year. The museum staged four major exhibition projects, including a solo exhibition by video art pioneer Bill Viola. For its first anniversary, it opened Müsinder, an exhibition spanning seven decades of Kazakh sculpture. More than 110 other events included lectures, discussions, concerts, and film screenings. The museum also published three books.
The arrival of The Clock marks a new stage in the young museum’s international ambitions.
Centre Pompidou has been expanding its presence beyond Paris for more than a decade. Its Paris building is closed for renovation until 2030, giving added scope to its international exhibition program. Málaga opened in 2015, and a project in Shanghai followed in 2019. Centre Pompidou Hanwha opened in Seoul in June 2026, while KANAL–Centre Pompidou is due to open in Brussels in November. Another site is planned for Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, in 2028.
The model varies between locations, with Centre Pompidou providing works from its collection, expertise, and jointly developed programs rather than simply reproducing its Paris museum abroad.
Almaty is pursuing a different model again. There will be no Pompidou branch here: ALMA remains an independent private museum. For now, the partnership can be seen quite literally – in a darkened gallery where Marclay’s screen keeps Almaty time.
The museum says its international network will expand again in October, when ALMA plans to sign a memorandum with KANAL–Centre Pompidou, the new museum of modern and contemporary art housed in Brussels’ former Citroën garage. The signing is expected to take place in the presence of Belgium’s King Philippe. The first joint project is planned as a series of performances by Belgian artist Ula Sickle.
The next step is Seoul. In fall 2027, ALMA plans a major exhibition of contemporary South Korean art prepared jointly with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA). Meanwhile, the museum is preparing an exhibition devoted to Kazakhstan’s monumental art and a retrospective of Abdrashit Sydykhanov.
These projects also point to a possible role for ALMA in Central Asia’s wider art scene. Artists from the region increasingly appear at international biennials and exhibitions, but there are fewer institutions able to collect and research their work over decades, publish catalogs, invite foreign curators, and negotiate directly with major international collections.
ALMA Artistic Director Meruyert Kaliyeva says cooperation with international museums is intended to involve jointly created projects rather than simply bringing famous works to Almaty.
For now, however, the international exchange works more clearly in one direction. Bringing Marclay to Almaty is a significant step for a one-year-old museum.
