The Centre Pompidou’s outpost in Metz, France, canceled a planned survey of Caribbean and Guyanese art in June, leading a range of artists to issue a statement condemning the decision to pull the show.
The exhibition was to be organized by Guadeloupean curator Claire Tancons, who has previously worked on editions of the Sharjah Biennial and Prospect New Orleans.
She had titled the show “Van Lévé” (the Creole version of the French phrase “le vent se lève,” meaning “the wind rises”). It was planned to open in October 2026, and was to include acclaimed artists such as Gaëlle Choisne, the winner of last year’s Prix Marcel Duchamp, and Pol Taburet, currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin.
According to Le Monde, a tense email exchange between Tancons and Centre Pompidou-Metz director Chiara Parisi ended with the show’s cancelation in June. “This cancellation comes in a particularly difficult budgetary context that is forcing us to reorganize the exhibitions and events initially planned in our program in a drastic manner,” Parisi wrote in an email to Tancons that was quoted by Le Monde.
Tancons told Le Monde that Paris’s claims of budgetary limitations were “unbelievable” and said that the exhibition had already received funding from organizations such as the Ford Foundation, which had contributed $500,000.
The show’s cancelation has raised questions in France, where some artists and curators have asked whether forms of bias played a role in the museum’s decision.
Le Monde published a statement from a range of artists and curators this week that appeared to denounce the exhibition’s cancelation. “A female curator from Guadeloupe will always be overambitious, even if her international reputation is well established and she provides nearly half the budget for the exhibition she designed in sponsorship,” the statement reads. “It turns out that we also share her ambition and offer her our unwavering support.”
Its signatories included Zineb Sedira, who represented France at the 2022 Venice Biennale, and Tabita Rézaire, an artist whose work was to appear in “Van Lévé.”
The cancelation comes as the Centre Pompidou shifts much of its programming away from its Paris base, which will soon close for five years while the museum undergoes an extensive renovation.
