Doubts have been raised over the Centre Pompidou’s ability to carry out a major planned renovation that will shut the Paris site down for five years from 2025. A critical report by the Cour des comptes, the supreme body for auditing the use of public funds in France, has warned of a “high risk of slippage in terms of costs and deadlines” for the “underfunded and insufficiently piloted” project.
The state is financing the long-overdue renovation of the building’s infrastructures. The court estimated that these works will cost €358m, almost €100m more than the French government’s figure of €262m. In addition, an extra €207m is being sought from sponsors by Laurent Le Bon, the Pompidou’s chairman, to fund his plans to also refurbish the centre’s cultural spaces. But, according to the auditing court, he has managed to raise only €39m, including €20m from Seoul’s Hanwha Culture Foundation, which is funding the preliminary studies. There is “very little time left” to find the missing €168m, the court warned.
Le Bon, who is focusing his fundraising campaign on individual American sponsors and countries such as Saudi Arabia, has pledged to reveal his programme in June and finalise it by the end of the year. But in his response to the audit, Le Bon admitted he will have to “adapt his plans according to the funds collected”. He also stressed that he had already raised the €19m necessary to enlarge a public library to 2,600 seats (from 2,200). His aim is to uphold the Centre Pompidou’s multidisciplinary character by maintaining the library and art galleries, and by including a cinema or musical research studio. Additionally, he is planning to open a new storage site on the outskirts of Paris in 2026.
However, the Cour des comptes pointed out that the budget has already “seriously ballooned”, and expressed its concern for the forthcoming building works because of a chronic weakness of the centre’s leadership. “A lack of global strategy”, “flaws in governance” and “an economic model difficult to sustain, with an overdependence on public subsidies” are some of the criticisms levied upon the Centre Pompidou in this damning report, which covers a decade of management—well before the arrival of Le Bon, who was appointed in July 2021 for a five-year term.
The audit further pointed out financial imbalances caused by the inflation of staff costs and a “low level of visitors”. In 2023, only 2.6 million visits were recorded (compared with3.2 million in 2019), due in part to repeated strikes, which forced the centre to close for 23 days. Only one third of visitors are foreign tourists.
The audit gave credit to the Centre Pompidou for the success of its branch in Málaga, Spain, but added that its strategy of launching international outposts was “still experimental”, nine years after the agreement of this first partnership. In his response, Le Bon pointed out that the spaces in Brussels, Shanghai and Jersey raised €16m in revenues last year, compared with €6m in 2019.