PARIS (Reuters) - A plexiglass piece by U.S. artist Corey McCorkle fell to the ground and broke into several pieces at the Pompidou Centre in Paris for unknown reasons, the gallery said on Wednesday, two years after two similar incidents.

The Pompidou Centre, a favorite with tourists thanks to its unusual facade criss-crossed by giant, colorful tubes, said McCorkle's 14-kg (30-pound) piece had been suspended from a device that was designed to take a load of up to 160 kg (350 pounds).

The work, entitled "Scale Model of Three-Part Blind Passage, Showing the Intertwining, Spiral Staircases in the Tallest Minaret in the World, Selimiye, Turkey," was part of an exhibition at the Pompidou called "Traces of the Sacred."

It fell on Saturday, breaking into two big pieces and one small splinter, the Pompidou Centre said, adding that prior to the incident the device used to hang the work had been approved by specialists.

The gallery said it had informed McCorkle and launched an investigation into the causes of the mishap.

In 2006, two works by U.S. artists Peter Alexander and Craig Kauffman fell off the wall and shattered during an exhibition dedicated to art from Los Angeles in the 1955-85 period.

The gallery found that Alexander's "Untitled," a bar of resin, had dropped because of a member of staff did not allow sufficient time for glue to dry on part of the work. The Pompidou Centre paid $28,000 to the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York, the lender, in compensation.

It never found out why Kauffman's "Untitled Wall Relief," a plexiglass piece covered in acrylic paint, had fallen off the wall 130 days after it was first hung. It paid $60,000 in compensation to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Giles Elgood)