At the end of April, a critical report from France’s court of auditors, who assess the use of public funds, revealed that the Centre Pompidou‘s economic model is unsustainable. The report outlines the financial strain on the museum caused by its forthcoming renovation, as well as its establishment of a new branch in Massy, France.

According to the report, costs have increased since the project began. The court estimated that this undertaking will cost €358 million ($383 million), nearly €100 million more than the French government’s initial estimate of €262 million ($282 million). An additional €207 million ($223,000) has been requested from sponsors by the museum’s chairman Laurent Le Bon to account for the difference.

Per the court, the institution must raise the money itself by the beginning of 2025 at the latest. As of now, it has raised €39 million ($42 million). Of the €39 million, €20 million ($21.5 million) came from Seoul’s Hanwha Culture Foundation. Centre Pompidou leadership has “very little time left” to raise the necessary €168 million, the court has warned.

Le Bon’s fundraising campaign has focused on individual American sponsors, as well as countries including Saudi Arabia. Le Bon has agreed to share program plans this month and finalize it before the start of the new year.

According to the Art Newspaper, Le Bon has admitted that he may have to “adapt his plans according to the funds collected.”

Mehretu’s collaboration with BMW marks the first time the artist’s characteristic abstractions, which are made from digitally altered photographs superimposed onto several layers of dot grids, have been applied to a three-dimensional surface. The aesthetic for the M Hybrid’s design closely following Mehretu’s monumental painting Everywhen (2021-2023).

“In the studio, where I had the model of the BMW M Hybrid V8, I was just sitting in front of the painting and I thought: What would happen, if this car seemed to go through that painting and becomes affected by it,” Julie Mehretu said in a statement. “The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that painting kind of dripping into the car. Even the kidneys of the car inhaled the painting.”

In tandem with the race car’s launch, Mehretu and BMW announced a  joint commitment to a “series of Pan-African Translocal Media Workshops” for filmmakers, to be held in various African cities including Dakar, Marrakesh, and the artist’s hometown, Addis Ababa, in 2025 and 2026, culminating in a major exhibition at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town.

The first BMW Art Car was designed by Alexander Calder in 1975. Subsequently, distinguished artists from Frank Stella to Esther Mahlangu to David Hockney have participated in the Art Car program. 

An exhibition of Mehretu’s work opened at the Palazzo Grassi from on 17 March for the Venice Biennale and will be on view through January 6, 2025. Titled “Ensemble” it is the largest exhibition of Mehretu’s work to date in Europe. Last year her 2001 work Untitled sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong $9.32 million (with fees), an auction record for an African-born artist.

THE HEADLINES

PROTEST/ART. Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World (1866) and other artworks were tagged with the red-painted words, “MeToo,” and an embroidered art piece by Annette Messager was snatched in plain sight at the Centre Pompidou-Metz yesterday. The provocative Courbet painting of a vulva, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, was not damaged, due to a protective glass covering. An artist named Deborah de Robertis, confirmed to reporters she organized what she describes as a group performance, titled “On ne sépare pas la femme de l’artiste,” [You don’t separate the woman from the artist]. A video shows two women painted the words “MeToo” on the Courbet artwork and another by the feminist Valie Export. A total of five pieces were targeted at the exhibit about the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, while participants distracted museum security and chanted “MeToo.” Two women have been detained by police, while Robertis is reportedly suspected of stealing Annette Messager’s red embroidered piece called “Je pense donc je suce” [I think, therefore I suck]. Robertis told the AFP the theft was a “gesture of re-appropriation,” because she recognized the object from the collection of an unnamed co-curator of the exhibit, whom Robertis said she knew personally from past sexual misconduct, according to Le Figaro. In other words, c’est compliqué!

STALEMATE. A judge has ordered a stalemate — for now — in the dispute over the land art installation Greenwood Pond: Double Site, by Mary Miss, located at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC). “Neither side is entitled to what it wants,” wrote US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, Stephen Locher, according to The Art Newspaper. Locher nevertheless issued a preliminary injunction blocking the DMAC from demolishing the artwork without the artist’s permission, as they had planned. But the judge also said the center could not be forced to repair the sculpture if the cost was too high. DMAC estimates restoration will require over $2.6 million, a sum which the artist contests. “The end result is therefore an unsatisfying status quo: the artwork will remain standing (for now) despite being in a condition that no one likes but that the court cannot order anyone to change,” said the judge. Miss nevertheless welcomed the ruling in response to her claim that the Edmundson Art Foundation, which owns DMAC, violated her original contract, and she hopes the temporary restraining order “opens the door to the consultations about the future of the site that were denied me.”

THE DIGEST

Police blocked pro-Palestinian protestors from getting close to the Met Gala yesterday in New York. Demonstrators were heading toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art when the NYPD intercepted their march at 5^th Avenue and 80^th Street, while barricades blocked alternative routes towards the exclusive fashion event. [Bloomberg]

Demonstrators targeted another black-tie event on Saturday, the Hammer Museum’s annual gala in Los Angeles, and called for the resignation of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, who is also a member of the museum’s board of directors. Some 50 UCLA faculty members reportedly protested outside the museum and called for amnesty for students and others arrested during campus Gaza demonstrations last week. [Hyperallergic]

Jack Lang, a former Socialist Party French Culture Minister and current head of the Arab World Institute in Paris, told El Pais, “the Arab world has abandoned Palestine. Even some of the countries that had shown signs of enthusiastic support for years.” The Arab World Institute recently held an exhibition featuring Palestinian artists, some of whom Lang said have died in the ongoing war. [El Pais]

A park on the Hudson River in New York known as “Little Island,” is being reconfigured into a four-month annual performance arts festival by its owner, Barry Diller, with a budget of over $100 million for programming over the next two decades. He is joined by Scott Rudin, the producer whom workers accused of bullying in 2021. [The New York Times]

Researchers in France have unearthed an unusually shaped, Neolithic monument in Marliens, south of Dijon, estimated to be thousands of years old. The 15-acre site “seems unprecedented” in its form, containing several, circular enclosures, said a statement by the French national Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP). [Smithsonian Magazine]

THE KICKER

BLOCKBUSTER SCANDAL. The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead chronicles “the British Museum’s blockbuster scandal,” over thousands of missing and stolen artifacts allegedly lifted and partly sold on eBay by a museum curator. Overlooked, and improperly catalogued, Mead explains the historic, high value ancient Romans attributed to artifacts like the now missing, engraved semiprecious stones and objects cast from glass. They were unique works of art, and reveal important details about their subjects. Mead also asks the underlying question: “Why should the sarcophagi of Egyptian kings or the fragments of ancient Greek architecture be housed in London, and claimed in some sense as British? … At a certain point in a museum’s history, it becomes more than just a repository of the cultural and artistic past, telling a story about the history of a nation, or a people, or the world. It also becomes a museum of itself – of its formation, its collecting history, its priorities, and its failings.”

“At the moment, let us say, the Centre Pompidou does not have the means to finance its development and investment projects on its own,” president of the Court of Auditors Pierre Moscovici told Le Monde, with a “message of extreme vigilance” to the museum as well as France’s Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for it.

Released yesterday, the report accounts for the Centre Pompidou’s finances between 2013 and 2022. During this time, the museum took on the complete renovation of its flagship by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, which requires the museum to close for at least five years beginning in 2025. The additional construction of a new storage and exhibition space in the suburbs of Paris, expected to open in 2026, has only increased the financial burden.

The renovation project costs €358 million ($383 million) and, due to delays, required an internal restructuring that is estimated to run a minimum of €200 million ($214 million) extra. The institution must raise the money itself by the beginning of 2025 at the latest. As of now, it has raised €39 million ($42 million).

The Massy space is expected to cost €254 million ($271 million), with an additional €142 million ($152 million) in expenses due to the undervaluation of expenditures and inflation, according to the magistrates.

Unlike most major Parisian museums, ticket revenue is at a plateau, with 2.62 million admissions in 2023; attendance has not returned to that of 2022 or pre-pandemic levels. The magistrates expect the museum to operate at a loss of €15 million ($16 million) while undergoing renovation work.

Over the last decade, the Centre Pompidou has diversified its resources through the promotion of its brand and extensive collections of 120,000 works, which make it the second largest museum of Modern and contemporary art in the world. It has expanded to include such locations as Malaga in Spain, and Shanghai in China, as well as those coming soon, Jersey City in the United States and Seoul in South Korea.

The Centre Pompidou is relying on a long-term partnership with Saudi Arabia that was established last year to help generate revenue.

The audit report encouraged the museum to focus efforts on updating its management and better cushioning its budget. The court also recommends exercising better control of expenses, including payroll. The possibility of outsourcing labor, however, already resulted in a several-months-long strike.

Additionally, the institution and the Ministry of Culture were recommended to maintain a productive dialogue, so as to not weaken the country’s financial stability.

The Centre Pompidou has a strategic committee in place, which comes together with the cultural ministry and the budget department twice annually to take stock of various projects.

THE HEADLINES

MOVING MONA. Should the Mona Lisa just get a room? That is the question the Louvre is seriously asking. In a meeting earlier this month, Louvre President Laurence des Cars pointed to a photo of the typically jam-packed gallery where Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait sits at the end of a lengthy, switch-back line. “We host visitors poorly in this room, so as a result, we have the impression we are doing our jobs poorly,” she said. “Moving La Joconde [as it is called in French] to a room apart, could put an end to the public’s disappointment,” she added. A recent online poll by CouponBirds found the Mona Lisa was seen by tourists as “the most disappointing artwork in the world,” though most feel they have to see it at least once in their lifetime. So if moved, where would she go? The Louvre is looking into creating a new entrance to the museum, as part of a future “Grand Louvre” renovation, that would bypass the glass pyramid entry, and lead directly to underground rooms, one of which would house the Mona Lisa.

WILD WARDROBE. 200 items from punk fashion designer Vivienne Westwood’s wardrobe will be auctioned at Christie’s in London to benefit several organizations in June, reports WWD. The iconic British designer passed away in 2022 at 81, and the sale proceeds are earmarked for the Vivienne Foundation, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Médecins Sans Frontières, among other philanthropies she supported. Westwood’s widower Andreas Kronthaler selected the clothing for sale, including a sweeping taffeta skirt and corset top, and clothing from the Propaganda collection.

THE DIGEST

The direct descendants of the Danish magnate Lars Emil Bruun (1852-1923) can finally sell his 20,000-piece coin collection worth some $72 million, which was locked in a will that prevented it from being auctioned for 100 years. The monumental coin and medal treasure will be sold by Stack’s Bowers, with the first lot offered this fall. [Bloomberg]

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired a major Bartolomeo Manfredi painting once attributed to Caravaggio. Christie’s had estimated the painting, A Drinking Musical Party (1619-20), was worth $4 to $6 million when it was offered in 2022, and it has gone on view this week at the museum’s East Pavilion. [The Art Newspaper]

An audit has determined the Centre Pompidou in Paris “does not have the financial means to finance it development and investment projects itself.” The museum is set to begin an ambitious renovation project that will see the institution shuttered for five years, beginning in 2025. [Le Monde]

A rare exhibit at the Hoam Art Museum in South Korea looks at the complex, more active role of women in ancient Buddhist art than is commonly known. The show encompasses artworks from Korea, China, and Japan, including paintings, sculpture, and embroidery from 27 global collections, and underscores how women advanced the production of Buddhist art as both creators and influential patrons. [The South China Morning Post]

PEN America has scrapped its awards ceremony after about half the nominated writers and translators withdrew their books from consideration in protest of “failure to confront the genocide in Gaza.” Awards will still be granted to those who wish to participate. [NPR]

An immersive exhibit recreates the Nova Music Festival campgrounds in Re’im, Israel, which were attacked by Hamas on October 7. Located in a 50,000 square-foot space in Manhattan’s Financial District, it includes objects from the site including burned cars, and bullet-pocked portable toilets. [The Art Newspaper]

THE KICKER

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. The Impressionist movement is being celebrated around the world on its 150^th anniversary, pegged to the first art exhibit in Paris associated with what was an emerging new painting style in 1874. But there is much the public misunderstands, and doesn’t know about what these artists were doing, and why they began making such radical paintings. For Art in America, Kelly Presutti looks at five books that show how Impressionism “was diverse in its reckoning with changing social dynamics.” It was also not limited to Europe, spreading to Japan, South Africa, and Brazil, per “Globalizing Impressionism: Reception, Translation, and Transnationalism,” edited by Alexis Clark and Frances Fowle. “No one artist or nation lay claim to Impressionism, and there is no fixed definition of the movement,” summarizes Presutti.

Butler’s statement continues, “As a result, I have decided not to participate formally in the events but have urged all the guests to take part as planned. This is my own choice based on my own judgment about what is best under these circumstances, and I am confident that the program will be truly excellent and encourage the public to attend.”

Butler, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and member of the American association Jewish Voice for Peace, was accused of antisemitism over statements they made at a video-recorded lecture outside Paris on March 3. At the event, hosted by the French YouTube program Paroles d’Honneur, Butler said the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, while “terrible,” was “not a terror attack or an antisemitic act,” but rather an “uprising” and an “act of armed resistance.”

Speaking later to the French news website Mediapart, Butler explained that their statements aimed to “analyze” Hamas’s attack “as political tactics” and did not mean they “[support] Hamas or [glorify] their atrocities.” The Paris city council previously canceled one of Butler’s talks on Palestine in December. Two more lectures centered on the power of mourning amid political conflict were pulled from programming at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris last month.

Butler was invited by the Centre Pompidou, a complex of cultural institutions that includes France’s National Museum of Modern Art, to be its “intellectual in residence.” The special series was first slated to run from September 14, 2023 through January 25, 2024. However, it was postponed due to a three-month strike of unionized staff at the institution that caused frequent closures. The strike ended in January with a contract agreement with between the employees and Pompidou leadership.

The Pompidou’s “intellectual season” was rescheduled for April 24–28, with more details of the program forthcoming.

ARTnews has reached out to the Centre Pompidou for comment.

The Headlines

CRIMINAL EVIDENCE ON VIEW. As promised, the British Museum will exhibit some of the small Roman gems stolen and recently recovered, among the nearly 2000 objects missing, damaged, and allegedly pocketed by a former senior curator at the museum. Some 350 items have been recovered to date, in the ongoing investigation that continues to shake the institution. Among the pieces to be displayed later this month, is a bust of Cupid from the 1^st or 2^nd Century BCE. “We promised we’d show the world the gems that were stolen and recovered – rather than hide them away,” George Osborne, chair of the museum Board of Trustees, told the BBC.

FRANKENTHALER FEUD. An amended legal complaint was filed against the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, by Frederick Iseman, the artist’s nephew. He has expanded on earlier allegations against members of the artist’s family, including his cousin, the artist Clifford Ross, whom he says was using foundation funds to bolster his own artistic career in a “pay-to-display machine.” [ARTnews]

The Digest

The Museum of Art at the University of New Hampshire will permanently close amid declining enrollment, and the attempts to reduce annual expenses by $14 million. The UNH laid off 75 of its 3,700 employees in mid-January. [ARTnews] 

Local critics and feminist groups are blasting an exhibition in Genoa’s Palazzo Ducale for describing in detail the rape of the artist Artemisia Gentileschi in 1611, via a multimedia installation, they say amounts to “voyeurism,” and “pornography of pain.” The exhibit called “Artemisia Gentileschi: Courage and Passion” includes some 50 paintings by the artist, and an unavoidable, darkened room detailing her rape at the age of 17 by the artist Agostino Tasso, which led to his trial. [The Art Newspaper]

A rediscovered William Turner watercolor painting found in the attic of a rural England estate will head to auction. Probably completed in 1796, when the artist was 21, the painting of Hampton Court, Herefordshire, is estimated to fetch between $38,000 and $63,000 in March at Minster Auctions in the UK. [BBC]

$1.6 million worth of rare wine was stolen from the historic, La Tour d’Argent restaurant. The 1582-founded restaurant discovered some 80 bottles of fine wines were missing, including from the costly Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, during an inventory check, and filed a criminal complaint last week. [Le Parisien]

The Centre Pompidou in Paris has launched a new collection of “urban art,” encompassing street and ephemeral art installations. It includes art by Gérard Zlotykamien, the artist duo Lek & Sowat, and the artist Miss.Tic, who passed away in 2022. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

Unionized Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) staff say management refuses to implement their agreement, which ended a historic strike at the institution. [The Art Newspaper]

The Italian parliament has postponed a no confidence vote against Vittorio Sgarbi, the junior culture minister and art critic investigated for laundering a 17^th-century painting. [The Art Newspaper]

[Update 2/2/24: The Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter originally stated that a new complaint had been filed against the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The newsletter has been updated to reflect that Frederick Iseman, the artist’s nephew, expanded on a prior complaint.]

The Headlines

CRIMINAL CONFESSION. The suspect in the murder of New York dealer Brent Sikkema confessed to a “crime of command.” Alejandro Triana Prevez, a 30-year-old Cuban national, was arrested soon after Sikkema, 75, was found dead with stab wounds in his Rio de Janeiro apartment. In an interview with O Globo newspaper, Prevez’s lawyer, Greg Andrade, said his client had admitted to the crime, but claimed someone else masterminded it. Prevez is cooperating with the investigation. “He has a lot to say. This story is much more complicated than we can even imagine,” Andrade told Artnet News. Prevez is not a “consummate criminal,” he added. Police are reportedly investigating whether Prevez had a relationship with Sikkema’s ex-husband.

GIVE BACK MY SLIPPERS. On Monday, Terry Martin, 76, was sentenced to one year of supervised release for stealing Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota in 2005. Martin thought they were made of real rubies, and said he planned to remove and sell the rubies individually, but that his hopes were dashed when another illicit jewelry dealer said the stones were made of glass. Martin pleaded guilty in October to theft of a major artwork and has been ordered to pay $23,500 to the museum, but has avoided incarceration because he is hospice care. The slippers, which were recovered in 2018, have an estimated market value of $3.5 million and are one of four surviving pairs used in The Wizard of Oz.

The Digest

Saudi authorities arrested Amr al-Madani, the CEO of the Royal Commission for AlUla, on charges of “abuse of authority and money laundering.” The news is a blow to Saudi Arabia, which is in the process of fashioning AlUla into an international arts and tourist destination, as part of the Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s “Vision 2030” plan. [ARTnews]

Following France, Belgium is the latest European country facing a possible art sales tax increase to 21 percent, due to a new E.U.-wide directive. Professionals told L’Echo they were worried that Belgium’s art market was threatened by the potential hike, which could raise the cost of selling art in the country. Currently, primary art sales have a 6 percent VAT, but government officials are discussing eliminating a special “margin system” for reselling works, which limits VAT to 21 percent of sale profits only. [L’Echo] 

The three-month strike at the Centre Pompidou has come to an end following an agreement with two major unions and the institution. France’s controversial new minister, Rachida Dati, is getting much of the credit for brokering the accord, but three out of five cultural unions were left out of the talks, and are now criticizing Dati’s tactics. [Le Quotidien de l’Art and ARTnews]

Despite a challenging global market, Sotheby’s announced $7.9 billion in sales last year. Private sales grew by 7.9 percent, and luxury goods helped the auction house reach its total, which is an 0.8 percent drop from its record $8 billion in 2022. In a shift, Gen X and Millennials accounted for 87 percent of certain luxury item sales, while also showing strong interest in fine art. [The Guardian and The Art Newspaper]

Alice Mackler, an artist whose piquantly fashioned ceramics caught the attention of prominent New York critics in the final stages of her career, died on Sunday at 92 in a Brooklyn hospice. Her New York gallery, Kerry Schuss, said she had died of Covid-related complications. [ARTnews]

The Kicker

CLOSING ACCUSATIONS. Lawyers for Dmitry Rybolovlev’s Accent Delight International and Sotheby’s made their dramatic closing statements Monday, in a case whose decision could majorly impact how dealers and auction houses do business, writes ARTnews Senior Writer Daniel Cassady. Rybolovlev’s attorney, Zoe Salzman , argued that Sotheby’s and the art market at large foster an overall culture of greed—that the turns a blind eye to immoral practices and prizes money “over principal, over truth, over their brand.” However, defense attorney Marcus Asner countered that the only thing proven to date was that Rybolovlev foolishly relied on Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, the man legally contracted as Sotheby’s client. “We are only here because Dmitry Rybolovlev wants someone to blame,” Asner told the jury.

As first reported in Le Monde, Centre Pompidou management signed an agreement today with the two union bodies, the FDT and Force Ouvrière.

In a statement shared on X, Rachida Dati, the French Minister of Culture who assumed her post earlier this month, said, “As soon as I arrived at the Ministry of Culture, I wanted to put an end to this bogged-down situation. One hundred days of strike is unprecedented in the history of the Center Pompidou.”

Pompidou workers went on strike in mid-October over concerns for job security while the center closes for renovations for five years, starting in 2025. According to a statement shared by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), one of five premiere national trade union confederations in France, around 1,000 employees across departments will be impacted by the closure. The union sought written guarantees from administration that there was a plan to for its staff, collections, and usual programming.

Adding to the unrest, workers have grown increasingly concerned about the center’s “cultural project,” or the program for its re-opening, which the workers have criticized as ill-planned and expensive. The $200 million program involves a significant increase in loans from the museum’s collection to institutions worldwide. Additionally, staff said that the millions in income promised by lending contracts isn’t worth the potential risk to artworks as they crisscross the globe.

Negotiations between the five trade union and unions and the culture ministry stalled in November 2023. The following month, the union again extended its strike, this time through January 15.

Per Le Monde, under the new agreement, the Public Information Library (BPI) will be relocated to the Lumière building, in Paris’s Bercy Village. The Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, a historic exhibition hall, will stage exhibitions on behalf of the shuttered space. Details of what such programming will look like are still to come.  

“This agreement is essential to ensure the protection of our colleagues during the renovation period of the Center Pompidou,” Alexis Fritche, CFDT-Culture general secretary, said in a statement. “I thank the workers and management for their spirit of responsibility.”

“We better leave now if we’re going to catch the minister,” Vincent Krier, a member of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), France’s second largest union, told the crowd of about150. The plan was to march to the offices of Rima Abdul Malak, the minister of culture, and pressure her “face to face” to meet their demands for job security amid plans that the center will close for renovations for five years, starting in 2025. It will begin progressively closing after the Summer Olympics in 2024.

Pompidou workers went on strike in mid-October over those concerns, the latest in a series of strikes since plans for the arts complex’s renovations were first announced. Last month, negotiations between France’s five major trade unions and the culture ministry over the strike stalled.

Despite the length of the strike, it has only caused the institution to close for eleven days total so far, thanks to alternating groups of workers opting to picket. When security personnel, for instance, go on strike, the museum is forced to close. On Thursday, however, only the Kandinsky Library was closed, having just joined the movement the day before. But, in yet another sign of the strike’s expansion, the unions announced on the same day they decided to extend the strike to January 15.

Once at the ministry’s offices, located a half mile away near the Louvre, the crowd packed into the lobby, chanting “Pompidou en colère!” [The Pompidou is angry], as whistles blew, people clapped, and some drummed on a reception desk. After some time, Nathalie Ramos, a representative of the CGT-Culture union, and a leading figure of the protest movement, which is arguably the largest since the museum’s opening in 1977, addressed the crowd.

“We’ve just given the minister an end-of year gift — the extension of the strike notice at the Pompidou!” she said.

No one seems to contest that the Pompidou’s modernist edifice, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, is in a state of critical disrepair. The ministry of culture has promised to spend about $285 million on necessary renovations, including asbestos removal, fire safety measures, and improved access and energy efficiency. However, the long closure period, which many expect to last longer than the projected five years, came as a blow to workers who were initially told it would take only three. Plus, staff say they have been kept in the dark on what the project means for them.

“We don’t know why they can’t at least maintain part of the museum open – they have shown no proof justifying such a long closure,” Ramos told ARTnews. “The problem is there is a lot of opacity on how things are being done.”

In addition, workers have said they are increasingly upset about the center’s “cultural project,” or program for its re-opening, about which they also feel uninformed. That initiative involves a noted increase in loans from the museum’s collection to cultural sites around the globe, so as to help fund the approximately $200 million the program is expected to cost, in addition to the structural budget mentioned. While some of those lending contracts, recently brokered by Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon, promise over $30 million in income over the next seven years, according to Le Monde, workers say it’s not worth the damage it risks to a collection constantly on the move. Plus, they have expressed misgivings about the human rights record of places like Saudi Arabia and China, where the Pompidou just signed and renewed, respectively, contracts for future working relationships and lending.

“We know [Le Bon is signing these contracts] for the money, but it weighs on us. Right now, we get the sense we’re working for Saudi Arabia and China, and it’s a problem — an ethical problem,” Aurélie Gavelle, who is a conservationist at the Pompidou and a member of the UNSA union, told ARTnews. “No amount of money can justify it.”

In an email, a Pompidou representative said that the museum loans about 6,000 artworks annually. “We lend, and we benefit from loans — that is the life of museums and collections. Of course, this is all subject to very strict rules and protocols, which unfortunately don’t prevent a few accidents of various degrees, which remain limited,” they said.

Further, according to the museum, the number of striking employees has decreased from 200 at the start of the strike to figures varying between 46 and 8 employees in November.

However, new departments, such as the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information, a library inside the Pompidou, joined the strike last week, along with the Kandinsky Library. Additionally, it appears that the movement is spreading to other museums. Employees and skilled craftspeople from the Louvre and the national library, Bibliotheque nationale de France, and the National Ceramics Museum in Sèvres, among others, attended Thursday’s protest, sharing their concerns about declining numbers of jobs in areas such as renovation and skilled labor.

Gavelle, who spoke to ARTnews while walking towards the ministry of culture Thursday, noted all these concerns have amplified a general sense that staff “cannot work serenely and in good conditions.”

Pompidou staff have also objected to moving the collection twice in less than a year’s time, because a new storage facility to house them in the town of Massy, south of Paris, will not be ready until 2026. The dispersal of both their jobs and the collection, “will have a colossal impact on our working conditions,” said Gavelle, who wondered why renovations can’t wait until the new storage facility is ready.

In mid-November, Malak, the culture minister, attempted a response via open letter. She echoed the museum’s president, who also said they had tried, but were unable to find a single site for most of the the Pompidou’s activities and workers. The Grand Palais will host exhibitions and many of the 1,000 Pompidou employees, along with other museums in Paris, and the new site in Massy. Malak also ensured that no workers would be forced out of a job, and that they would be promised the same job or “an equivalent” one upon the museum’s reopening in 2030. She and the Pompidou would not, however, promise they would not resort to some subcontracted jobs, for employees in the private sector, once the museum opens – a major issue for workers, who want to keep the same number of public servant employees at the opening.

“It is too early to freeze the establishment’s organization structure, for what will be needed in 2030,” Malak wrote. “I’m aware of the long period of this closure, but it is necessary.” In the meantime, the center “will be more active than ever during these five years, with a rich program led by your president.”

On Thursday, Malak never did meet the protesters face-to-face, declining to come out and speak to the crowd. No doubt, however, she got the message.