Local art professionals have mixed feelings about the Centre Pompidou’s plans to open a Modern and contemporary art centre in the Belgian capital. Advocates say that the new facility will be Belgium’s answer to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London. But some wonder why the city—which has become an increasingly important art destination in recent years—feels that it must import works from Paris when it is already home to many strong collections of its own.
The still-unnamed institution is expected to open in 2020 inside a converted garage formerly owned by the car maker Citroën. The Centre Pompidou plans to loan an unspecified number of works from its 120,000-strong collection to the new museum.
Serge Lasvignes, the president of the Centre Pompidou, said at a press conference in late September that the French institution would advise on “the acquisition strategy for permanent collections and the development of the future museum”, as well as programming. We understand that the Pompidou will receive a fee for its franchise in Belgium; under Lasvignes, the gallery is pursuing a strategy of establishing branded pop-ups worldwide, including a temporary space in Seoul next year.
The government of the Brussels- Capital region first announced plans to convert the garage into an art institution in 2014 but the project stalled because the regional and federal governments had very different visions. The federal government plans to renovate existing state institutions, such as the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, while the regional government has been keen to refurbish the Citroën building in a more underserved area northwest of the city centre. The Pompidou’s proposal revived the regional government’s scheme, which has been in limbo for several years.
Amid the bureaucratic wrangling, Brussels’s powerful community of collectors has become impatient. Many say that a major Modern art museum is long overdue. “I will support any initiative that will further Belgian culture, especially in Modern and contemporary art,” says the collector Ronald Rozenbaum.
But some say that the country should have been able to establish a museum on its own. “We can easily fill three Citroën garages with Modern and contemporary art drawn from public and private collections,” says the collector Walter Vanhaerents.
Katerina Gregos, the former artistic director of the Art Brussels fair, is sceptical that an international franchise is the best solution for the city’s art scene. “The idea to partner with Pompidou is more about tourism, creation of jobs, branding and city marketing rather than stemming from a concrete artistic vision that would make sense for the city, the region and the country,” she says.
Others fear that the franchise could cannibalise resources from existing institutions. They “should not be penalised by this decision”, says the collector Benedikt Van der Vorst, who adds that he still backs the project. A spokesman for the Pompidou says that the €140m Citroën scheme will be funded entirely by the Brussels-Capital region.
Even critics of the project acknowledge that it has the potential to boost the local economy. Gregos says: “This is not the best solution but perhaps it could be a stepping stone to something better for Brussels, Belgium and the wider European context.”
Pompidou looks beyond the West for new biennialA branch in Brussels is not the only new project the Centre Pompidou has in the works. Curators at the Paris museum will look beyond established art centres and focus on emerging hubs in a new biennial called Cosmopolis. The chosen artists will create new works in their home countries or in Paris, which will go on show in a special exhibition at the Beaubourg gallery by early 2018. “Artists from Pakistan, India and Colombia are participating,” says a museum spokeswoman.