2024-02-07 17:58:38
Having barely signed the memorandum of understanding putting an end to a social conflict which lasted a hundred days at the Center Pompidou and caused 2 million euros in losses, its president Laurent Le Bon wanted to restart the machine. On February 6, he detailed the « constellation » of activities of its establishment during its closure for works, from the summer of 2025 to 2030. A difficult exercise, as the Beaubourg liner must face challenges in succession. So much so that the “boss”, insisting on enthusiastic declarations, finished his speech with a broken voice.
First there is the moving of the collections which will begin, just after the Olympics in 2024, in the current reserves of the Center Pompidou in the north of Paris. Then a second move in the summer of 2026 to its future Reserve Center in Massy, construction of which should start this fall. At the same time, the Public Information Library will be relocated to the Lumières building in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, “with the teams from the workshops, audiovisual, archives and the Kandinsky Library”specified Laurent Le Bon.
At the same time, the 290 agents assigned to security, reception and surveillance at Beaubourg will join the Grand Palais. In its newly renovated spaces, 2,800 m2 will be reserved for the National Museum of Modern Art, which will present four exhibitions per year for five years. This will begin in June 2025 with a display dedicated to “Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hulten”and another to the donation of art brut from collector Bruno Decarme.
An exhibition on Matisse’s last period is also planned for spring 2026. « Didier Fusillier, president of the RMN-Grand Palais, is full of other ideas and projects that he wants to carry out with us. I will leave it to him to announce them”added Laurent Le Bon, with heartfelt thanks to the person concerned, seated in the first row of guests.
A “constellation” still too Parisian
Other projects outside the walls will be deployed in Paris thanks to partnerships established with ten major Parisian museums or establishments: Guimet, Branly, Orsay, Rodin, Orangerie, Jeu de Paume, Gaîté-Lyrique, Panthéon, Philharmonie (with an exhibition on Kandinsky and music in 2025). At the top of this poster, the Louvre Museum will host three major confrontations of works from the Museum of Modern Art with its old collections, including a first from the fall of 2026 in its art objects department.
In comparison, the regional exhibition program, during the closure of Beaubourg, seemed a little thin. In addition to those at the Center Pompidou-Metz, others are planned in Centre-Val de Loire (as part of its Ar (t]chipel festival), at the Grenoble Museum, at the Saint-Germain abbey in Auxerre, at the former Guimet Museum in Lyon, at the Postal Sorting Center in Lille, at the LAM in Villeneuve d’Ascq, at the Hôtel des arts in Toulon (as part of the Design Parade festival), at the Cité du design in Saint-Étienne. To this must be added collaborations with the Lyon Dance Biennale and five sites of the Center des monuments nationaux in the region. Which makes around fifteen decentralized projects in total. We are far from the “one hundred projects in the region” promised by Laurent Le Bon in May 2023.
“Many agreements are still under discussion for the period 2027-2030 and large cities like Marseille, Bordeaux, or Rennes will not be forgotten”promises Xavier Rey, director of the National Museum of Modern Art, who adds that “long-term loans of works are also planned in the museums of Strasbourg and Nantes”. In total, “60% of the 6,000 to 8,000 works that we lend each year will concern France and 40% will go abroad”estimated Laurent Le Bon, without specifying these figures.
A moratorium on other loans
Partnerships and exhibitions abroad are indeed a crucial issue during the closure. Because the president wanted to add to the renovation and asbestos removal work (funded by the State to the tune of 262 million euros), a new cultural and architectural project for the reopening, which he was asked to finance entirely. This is valued at 180 million euros. “We have already found a third of them”said Laurent Le Bon.
Its establishment has just renewed its collaborations for five years with the Pompidou Centers in Malaga and Shanghai. And three other centers are expected to open in Brussels (end of 2025), Seoul (in 2026), and Jersey City in (2027). An agreement and a memorandum of understanding were signed for the contribution of the scientific expertise of the Beaubourg teams to the creation of a contemporary art museum in Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia and another in the State of Parana in Brazil.
At the same time, Beaubourg intends to increase the sale of exhibitions abroad. For this, three multi-year partnerships have already been concluded with the Fundacion La Caixa in Spain, with H’Art Amsterdam and the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco. And the National Museum of Modern Art has developed a whole catalog of exhibitions (Brancusi, Chagall, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Dubuffet, Léger, Kandinsky, Matisse) which it will offer on tour to museums around the world.
In return, those who hoped to obtain free loans of works for their own exhibitions will be asked to wait. A moratorium on loans not granted within the framework of operations outside the walls was decided during the closure of Beaubourg. Although exceptions will be made for “historical partners”, such as the Philadelphia Museum, MoMA and the Metropolitan in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice. The priority is clearly to favor paid operations. It’s urgent. The choice of the winning architectural firm, among the six selected for the Center Pompidou 2030 competition, will be announced in March or April 2024.
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