A planned outpost of the Centre Pompidou in Jersey City, New Jersey, is “dead”, according to the city’s new mayor. Asked about the project during a recent press conference, mayor James Solomon said: “We will not be doing Pompidou, to be clear. It is dead.” According to NJ.com, the comments came after Solomon revealed that Jersey City—the second-largest municipality in New Jersey after Newark, and situated just across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan—has a $255m deficit.
The most recent plan for the Centre Pompidou Jersey City, outlined in 2024 by Solomon’s predecessor Steven Fulop, called for the museum to take up 100,000 sq. ft inside a pair of 50-storey towers to be built near Journal Square. At the time those plans were unveiled, the museum’s annual budget was estimated at $27.5m, which was to be covered through a mix of philanthropic gifts, tax credits, government funding, visitor revenue and more.
Plans to create a satellite of France’s national museum of modern and contemporary art in Jersey City were first revealed in 2021. Initially, the project was expected to take over 58,000 sq. ft of the historic Pathside Building in Journal Square, which was to be renovated by the world-renowned architecture firm OMA, and open by 2024. That plan, touted by Fulop and then New Jersey governor Phil Murphy (both Democrats), became the subject of a partisan dispute, with state Republicans characterising the initiative as “a circus of waste and excess”.
The Centre Pompidou boasts outposts in Shanghai, Brussels, Málaga and forthcoming projects in Seoul, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. The Jersey City satellite was to be its first location in North America. The Centre Pompidou in Paris closed to the public last September for an extensive renovation, and is expected to reopen in 2030.