Just months after New Jersey legislators pulled funding for the project, plans for a US satellite location of Paris’s Centre Pompidou appear to be back on track.
The project to create a Centre Pompidou in Jersey City promises immersive, interactive experiences that centre the local art scene in northern New Jersey, complete with a special focus on education and performance initiatives. Despite pushback by local politicians citing tax burdens to New Jersey residents that appeared to have scuttled the project in June, the initiative was revived by the Jersey City Council on 25 September following a rousing op-ed published in Hudson City View by Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop.
In the artist, Fulop called the Jersey City Pompidou outpost a “once in a lifetime opportunity” and implied that New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy had “reversed” his support for the museum project in retaliation for Fulop’s lack of endorsement for his wife’s senatorial campaign. A subsequent six-hour Jersey City council meeting that the Jersey Journal described as “rowdy” culminated in a six-to-three vote in favour of the project, albeit in a different location that the original proposal.
The new museum will occupy 100,000 sq. ft inside two 50-storey towers at 808 Pavonia Avenue, although it remains unclear what percentage of the space will be dedicated to exhibitions.
“The Centre Pompidou … is called the ‘centre’ because it is a place where different disciplines and different people with different interests meet,” Charles Aubin, the co-director of the Centre Pompidou Jersey City, said in an interview with NJ.com. “You can go and see an exhibition of the collection, an exhibition of living artists, you can also go and see films … you can go see a performance … you can go and see a talk. There are programs of poetry, debates and video art.” He added: It is a very active site. It is part of the DNA of the Pompidou.”
Fellow co-director Anna Hiddleston-Galloni described the future museum as “a platform for local artists”, emphasising the “international connections, terms of visibility, production support, commissioning and even mentorship with art students” that will be planned.
According to NJ.com, more than 200 Jersey City stakeholders have met with the Pompidou curators, including school administrators, artists and representatives for local cultural organisations like 14C Art Fair, the city’s major spring art event.
The collaboration between Jersey City and the Centre Pompidou was announced in 2021, with an opening projected for earlier this year. The original home for Centre Pompidou Jersey City was to be the Pathside Building, a historical edifice from 1912 in Journal Square. But after the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency was only able to allocate $4m towards the estimated $23m recurring operational costs for the project, lawmakers opted to pause the project “indefinitely” in June after becoming the subject of partisan disputes in the state.
Mayor Fulop’s new proposal involves a ten-year plan to cover those costs, now calculated at $27.5m, which will combine visitor revenue, philanthropic donations, government grants, tax credits, a library contribution and a city landlord contribution.
The Centre Pompidou, home to France’s national collection of modern and contemporary art, boasts outposts in Shanghai, Brussels, Málaga and forthcoming projects in Seoul and Saudi Arabia. The Jersey City satellite will be the institution’s first North American endeavour. The museum’s Paris headquarters are due to close for five years of renovations beginning next year, though that plan has faced pushback and scepticism.
