A major blow for the Centre Pompidou: its project for a branch in the United States has been cancelled with the obligation to reimburse six million dollars to the State of New Jersey, while it is looking for funding in France. This project that the great Parisian museum of modern art was to open in 2027 in Jersey City, in the suburbs of New York, is “suspended until further notice”, the establishment confirmed to theAFP Tuesday, after information from the local American press was taken up by the website specializing in art ARTnews.
New Jersey state officials deemed the cost too high, according to the local news website New Jersey Monitorwhich published an official letter to this effect to the president of the Centre Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon. “While we are honored by the selection of Jersey City as the first North American site to host a branch of the Centre Pompidou, we have decided to suspend this project until further notice,” a state official declared in this letter. He reported a significant increase in costs for public finances, particularly since the Covid crisis.
In a letter also published by the New Jersey Monitorthe Jersey City redevelopment agency also announced the cancellation of $18 million in funding for the future museum, even going so far as to ask the Pompidou Center to “repay $6 million already allocated” before August 1.
This is a major blow for the Parisian institution, one of the most important museums of modern and contemporary art in the world, which must close for at least five years in the summer of 2025 for major asbestos removal and renovation work, estimated at 262 million euros, financed by the State. And this, while it is also looking for additional equity financing of 186 million euros for its cultural project. The latter, recently entrusted to a Franco-Japanese duo and a Mexican architect, consists of a redevelopment of the spaces of the museum built almost half a century ago and recognizable by its colorful exterior tubular structure, designed by the Italian Renzo Piano and the British Richard Rogers.
Laurent Le Bon explained that he intended to raise these funds with the help of “patronage”, “the circulation of works” and “the possible association of another country”. In a severe report published in April, the Court of Auditors had pinned down its “economic model that is difficult to sustain” with a “renovation project that is insufficiently managed and whose financing is not assured”. If the technical aspect is “entirely supported by the State”, according to this public finance control body, “the cultural aspect will have to be financed from own resources”, with “169 million euros missing to launch the works contracts”.
Asked by theAFP, The Centre Pompidou did not provide any details on the financial consequences of the American decision, indicating only that “discussions with the mayor of Jersey City will continue in order to decide together on the next steps for the project.” This New York partnership was to be the fifth major and the first on the American continent for the Centre Pompidou, which has already lent its name to arts centers in Malaga, Shanghai and Brussels. Located on the west bank of the Hudson River, facing Manhattan, Jersey City is a former industrial city that has been undergoing transformation – and gentrification – since the 1980s.
New York already has two major museums of contemporary art, the MoMA and the Whitney, complemented by the contemporary art offerings of the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim. In recent years, Jersey City has attracted a growing number of artists, with the skyrocketing rents in New York. Solicited by theAFPthe Ministry of Culture had not reacted immediately.
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