The Centre Pompidou’s outpost gallery in Málaga will remain open in the Spanish city for another ten years under a new partnership deal signed by the city council and officials at the Paris gallery.
Malaga city council will pay the Centre Pompidou an annual fee of €2.7m over the next five years (2025-29), rising to €3.1m in the latter period (2030-34), the gallery has confirmed.
The subterranean Centre Pompidou Málaga is housed beneath a colourful glass cube on a waterfront created by the French artist Daniel Buren. The 6,000 sq. m satellite space opened in March 2015, following the original five-year deal that was signed in September 2014 and renewed early 2018.
More than a million visitors have since attended the venue, according to a Centre Pompidou statement. The current exhibition, Place-ness (until 28 March 2025), focuses on the concept of “territory”, presenting depictions of “indeterminate spaces in our post-industrial society”. All of the works on show are drawn from the Centre Pompidou collection, including pieces by Gerhard Richter and Otobong Nkanga.
The Spanish outpost is seen as a “laboratory” for the Pompidou’s international ambitions elsewhere, which have recently floundered. Last month officials in the US state of New Jersey withdrew millions in promised funding to Centre Pompidou x Jersey City, a satellite branch planned for Jersey City, the state’s second-largest city. The City of Jersey City was contacted for comment.
Other satellite projects in Saudi Arabia and South Korea are still in the pipeline. Last March, Centre Pompidou officials confirmed that a branch of the Beaubourg gallery would open in Seoul. The museum, located in Tower 63, the headquarters of the Hanwha group, will be designed by the French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte and is due to open next year.
The Centre Pompidou also signed a partnership deal last year with the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU)—the Saudi government cultural body—linked to a new contemporary museum planned for the vast AlUla heritage region in the northwest of the country. The Centre Pompidou will be one of numerous partners involved in the Arabian kingdom’s latest contemporary art project.
Meanwhile doubts were recently raised over the Centre Pompidou’s ability to carry out a major planned renovation that will shut the Paris site 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.