The project that the great Parisian museum of modern art, the Center Pompidou, was supposed to open in 2027 in Jersey City, a suburb of New York, is “suspended for the time being”, the establishment confirmed to AFP on Tuesday, after information from the local US press. taken from the art website ARTnews.
State authorities in New Jersey deemed the costs too high, according to local news website New Jersey Monitor, which published an official letter to this effect to the president of the Center Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon.
Funding cancelled
“While we are honored by the selection of Jersey City as the first North American location to host a branch of the Center Pompidou, we have decided to suspend this project until further notice,” a state official said in this letter. It reports a significant increase in the cost to the public finances, especially after the Covid crisis.
In a letter, also published by the New Jersey Monitor, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency also announced the cancellation of $18 million in funding for the future museum. She is asking the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency to repay six million already set aside by August 1st.
This is a severe blow to the Parisian institution, one of the most important museums of modern and contemporary art in the world, which will close for at least five years in the summer of 2025 for major asbestos removal and renovation, estimated at 262 million euros, financed by the state. And this, while also looking for additional equity funding of 186 million euros for its future cultural project when it reopens.
A “difficult to sustain economic model”
This cultural project, recently entrusted to a Franco-Japanese duo and a Mexican architect, consists of the remodeling of the museum space built almost half a century ago and recognizable by its colorful exterior tubular structure, designed by the Italian Renzo Piano and the museum. British Richard Rogers.
Laurent Le Bon explained that he intended to raise these funds by means of “patronage”, “circulation of works” and “a possible association of another country”.
In a scathing report published in April, the Court of Auditors had pegged its “difficult financial model” with a “renovation project that was inadequately managed and whose funding was not secured”.
If the technical component is “fully supported by the state”, according to this public financial control body, “the cultural component must be financed from own funds”, with “169 million euros missing to launch the shopping markets”. .
When asked by AFP, the Pompidou Center gave no details on the financial consequences of the US decision, but indicated only that “discussions with the mayor of Jersey City will continue to jointly decide on the follow-up that will be given to the project”.
This New York partnership would be the fifth major and the first on the American continent for the Center Pompidou, which has already given its name to artistic centers in Malaga, Shanghai and Brussels.
