José-Manuel Gonçalvès will leave the Centquatre, which he has made into an essential cultural venue in fifteen years

After five successive mandates, the boss of Centquatre, in Paris, will leave office in September. Not without having left its mark on this third place which has become an immense liner which interests the whole world.

LThe rumor had been growing for several months. José-Manuel Gonçalvès confirmed it this morning: after fifteen years managing the Centquatre, he will not seek a new mandate next September, even if he will design the 2025-2026 season. During an express meeting bringing together the ninety employees, he explained that he had made his decision a few years ago – in 2021, he had also applied for the management of the Avignon Festival, but It was Tiago Rodrigues who finally won the bet. Jokingly comparing himself to the coach of the French football team Didier Deschamps, who has just announced his departure at the head of the Blues after an exceptional career, he assured that he had not yet found any base. However, he remains involved within the Société des Grands Projets (formerly Grand Paris), which is keen to involve the cultural world in the gigantic transport project in the Ile-de-France region.

In the process, the board of directors of Centquatre ratified the decision of its director and a call for applications was launched for his succession. The project for the Parisian establishment remains the same, and will continue to combine live shows, exhibitions, open access to artistic practices, a cultural engineering center… For the moment, no candidate name is yet known, even if it is rumored internally that Paris City Hall would like to entrust the establishment to a big name in culture. Thomas Jolly would have been approached, but would have preferred to decline…

From 15 to 250 artistic residencies per year

In five successive mandates, always renewed by the City of Paris, José-Manuel Gonçalvès will have left his mark on this immense liner docked in a popular district of the 19^e district, inaugurated in 2008 in place of the old funeral parlor stables. The first directors had their teeth set on the imposing site (39,000 square meters to animate!), and the arrival of José-Manuel Gonçalvès, in September 2010, marked the beginning of a new era.

We regularly see, when crossing the halls which follow one another between 104, rue d’Aubervilliers, and 5, rue Curial, how the place has become an essential artistic place in the capital, which particularly attracts young performers from practice in complete freedom. The consolidated figures point in the same direction: since 2010, artistic residencies there have increased from 15 to 250 each year, all disciplines combined (theater, dance, circus, music). Four exhibitions take place there on average each year (from Keith Haring to the supercharged Contemporary Art Fair, including the Némo Biennial of Digital Arts). The festivals follow: Impatience, dedicated to theatrical emergence, Séquence Danse Paris, Les Singulier.es…

With a certain flair, José-Manuel Gonçalvès and his team (including Julie Sanerot, production director) have supported important artists, French or foreign: Vimala Pons, Olivier Dubois, Emily Loizeau, Leïla Ka, Jeanne Added, Albin de Simone, Christiane Jatahy, Lia Rodrigues, Alessandro Sciarroni, the Berlin collective… And the attendance at 104 (which welcomed around two hundred and sixty eleven events, as in 2023) has exploded, going from 85,000 in 2010 to 550,000 visitors today. Enough to risk the “overheating” of the teams, who had also gone on strike at the beginning of February 2022 to denounce a “tense flow” post-containment – ​​a movement that they had lifted after ten days, after having obtained winning the case.

Such a special model

The last mandate of José-Manuel Gonçalvès was also marred by his suspension for four months, as a precautionary measure, during an investigation. This was done following a report in Mexico for an alleged assault of a sexist and sexual nature. The prosecution dismissed it in the spring, and the internal investigation did not detect anything reprehensible.

The very particular model of the cultural establishment continues to unfold and interest the whole world. Because in addition to being an artistic hive, this place is also the beating heart of the neighborhood, integrating a café and restaurant, a bookstore, associative spaces, a business incubator, and offering cultural and social activities all year round. At CentQuatre, José-Manuel Gonçalvès invented, on a colossal scale, a mixed solution that we today call a “third place”. To the point that this know-how has become a new, sellable activity. This cultural engineering, developed over ten years by a department of around a dozen people, is now exported through missions in France (for the artistic and cultural direction of the Grand Paris Express since 2015, etc.) or abroad (studies for the reconversion of an old artillery in Seville or an air base in Taiwan, the C-Lab).

All this explains why the establishment’s own resources, now subsidized to the tune of 8.5 million annually by the City of Paris, have increased considerably. Until reaching 60% of the budget, increased between 2010 and 2024 from 10 to 18 million. In view of such results and a season which has started well, the bar is high for whoever takes over.