Saudi Arabia will give €50m towards the refurbishment of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Rachida Dati, the French culture minister, and her counterpart, Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Farhan Al Saud, confirmed earlier this month. This move to support France’s national museum of Modern and contemporary art, which is scheduled to begin a massive €262m renovation later this year, marks the latest development in a burgeoning cultural partnership between the two countries.
As part of a new bilateral ten-agreement package, France will also develop a range of museum and heritage initiatives in Saudi Arabia, including a new photography museum in Riyadh supported by the National School of Photography in Arles, says a culture ministry statement.
Other joint projects, conducted with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and the project management body Opérateur du patrimoine et des projets immobiliers de la Culture (OPPIC), will include the restoration and enhancement of Saudi heritage sites, including royal palaces. In addition, the expertise of the Grand Palais-RMN and the Ecole nationale supérieure de Création industrielle (National Higher School of Industrial Creation) will support the development of new Saudi museums.
French experts from the National Library of France will also oversee the digitisation, conservation and promotion of collections, while archaeological projects will launch in the planned city of Qiddiya with assistance from the French National Institute for Archaeological Research.
Both countries signed a bilateral agreement in 2018, hailed as “historic” by the Saudi media, which focuses on a proposed network of future museums and archaeological sites around a museum of Arabic civilisation at the city of AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia. The French Agency for AlUla development (Afalula) is specifically tasked with developing ties with the city.
The ten-year deal gives France an exclusive role in a project potentially worth tens of billions of euros in an area almost the size of Belgium. It also confirms the role that culture, tourism and the arts could play in the opening-up and modernisation of the country, in line with the Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 plan.
Crucially, a new contemporary museum is planned for AlUla under a partnership deal signed by Saudi Arabia and The Centre Pompidou last year, whereby the Paris institution will loan works to the Middle Eastern kingdom. The contemporary art space, announced in May 2023 along with another new institution, a museum dedicated to the Incense Road, will be designed by the Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh, who oversaw the Serpentine Pavilion in London last year.
Each of these partnerships underpins the drive by the Saudi government to rebrand the conservative state that has a concerning human rights record. Between 2015 and 2022, an average of 129 executions were carried out each year in the kingdom. A French critic, who chose to remain anonymous, told The Art Newspaper: “The French/Saudi partnership is part of a drive to promote the cultural credentials of Saudi Arabia, helping to diversify and deliver a more ‘open’ image of the country.”
