The Court of Auditors scrutinizes the management and projects of the Center Pompidou

While the Center Pompidou is in full reflection on its future and is one year away from a long period of closure for works, the Court of Auditors publishes a very critical report on its management. “Internal governance which does not appear to be in line with the scale of the projects”, economic and financing model “difficult to sustain”, all against a backdrop of absence of reform in the management of human resources: the grievances of the magistrates, assorted a mountain of figures, give the image of a cultural center full of flaws.

The immense work, planned between 2025 and 2030, will be largely covered by the State (for an amount estimated by the Court at 358 million euros). But Laurent Le Bon, president of the center, wants to go further, with a cultural project called Moviment (new agora, use of level minus 1 and the terrace, reorganization of the collections, etc.). Moviment is estimated at an amount of 180 million euros, which the president intends to find himself, from patrons and foreign partners. In February, the latter explained that he had already found 60 million euros and had “divided his project into several functional blocks”. “By the end of 2025, we will try to find as much money as possible. If the completeness is found, the entire project will be completed. Otherwise, we will do it block by block, with priority for the library – 20 million euros of which have already been financed – and the Agora, symbol of change,” he explained.

All this is “insufficiently managed and financing is not assured”, decide in return the magistrates of the Court of Auditors, for whom “169 million euros are missing to launch the work”. According to them, there is little time left to bring them together, if Laurent le Bon and his teams want to be on target for the launch of public markets.

On the sidelines of these titanic works decided and approved in high places, Beaubourg launched the construction of a new place of reserves, the Pompidou Center in the Ile-de-France region. Located in Massy (Essonne), it will be as much a place for exhibitions as for the conservation of the 122,000 works of the National Museum of Modern Art and the National Picasso Museum. “Its cost has skyrocketed,” we read in the report. In the context of a public-private partnership market, significant overruns of initial estimates occurred due to the undervaluation of certain expenditure items and the inflationary context. As a result, Massy should represent “more than 254 million euros”, partly covered by the communities.

So much for the major expenses, which occur in a context where attendance is sluggish, the health crisis having not helped anything. With a relatively low share of foreign visitors (36%) compared to other major museums (57 to 70%), the Center Pompidou does not seem well equipped, in the eyes of magistrates, to increase its own resources. Partnerships established abroad (Malaga, Shanghai, Brussels, soon Seoul and Saudi Arabia) have still ensured revenues of 16 million euros in 2023. “The question of the entry fee will be intended to be examined with a view to reopening in 2030,” suggest the magistrates.

For good measure, the Court is also tackling the management of the center’s staff (1,000 jobs). In its previous report, dating from 2014, it noted “the need to modernize the establishment’s human resources management”. However, “nearly ten years later, it is clear that no structural reform has been carried out in this area,” she notes. Staff status, organization of working hours for shift agents (including room attendants), modality for conducting social dialogue... “The status quo no longer appears tenable,” states the court. The major strikes which shook Beaubourg for 23 days at the end of 2023 seem to prove them right. Modernization must become a priority, and closure, an opportunity to “catch up,” conclude the magistrates.