Most everyone seems to agree the Centre Pompidou in Paris, with its famous, inside-out design by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, is in dire need of a clean-up and structural renovation. But that’s about it.

Pompidou staff have been regularly striking since early October, forcing the museum to temporarily close, due to a lack of transparency over what will happen to their jobs while the institution progressively closes in the fall of 2024, coming to a complete closure between the winter of 2025 and 2030.

But lately, they have more to complain about. According to Le Monde, the museum’s director, Laurent Le Bon, has been crisscrossing the globe, signing contracts for millions of dollars with museums and cultural institutions to which the Pompidou will loan works from their collection while it is closed. Though the museum did not respond to questions, French reports have said the institution has been looking to fund the roughly €186 million (about $235 million) needed for its “cultural project,” upon reopening in 2030. France’s ministry of culture has pledged to pay the approximately $285 million needed to repair the building’s corrosion since opening in 1977, including the removal of asbestos from the façade, improvement of fire-safety, accessibility, and energy efficiency.

Among the contracts, a deal was signed on Monday with the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), promising expertise and development for a contemporary art museum to open in AlUla, an oasis city in Saudia Arabia, in 2027. The Pompidou statement announcing the agreement did not mention loaning works, a detail echoed by Le Monde, who reported that the RCU pledged nearly $14 million for a four-year joint collaboration. However, the RCU’s announcement did. The “program allows for the ongoing exchange, acquisition, loan, and display of artworks and artifacts between RCU and Centre Pompidou, as well as the promotion of various scientific and cultural initiatives based around the sharing of unique items from each partner’s collection,” stated the RCU.

According to Le Monde, other agreements signed by the Paris institution include a three-year partnership with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for $3.9 million; five exhibitions including works by Matisse, Kandinsky, and Brancusi for the H’ART Museum in Amsterdam at a fee of $4.14 million; and two exhibitions for the Spanish La Caixa contemporary art foundation for $2.2 million. On November 24, the Pompidou renewed its contract with the West Bend Museum in Shanghai for another five years, bringing in a reported $4.5 million annually.

Works from the Pompidou collection will also make the rounds in French institutions. The Grand Palais, in particular, will host temporary exhibitions, after its renovations are completed next year. The Louvre and the medieval Conciergerie palace, where Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned, are also in the line-up.

But questions remain as to what specific programs are planned, and where artworks are destined to land. In fact, that is one of the complaints raised by striking workers, who show little sign of backing down soon, fueling regular, cyclical closures of the museum to the public.

In a November 21 letter to France’s Ministry of Culture, five major unions said workers had “no information or precise communication about the famous ‘cultural project,’” (referring to plans for the opening in 2030) and “don’t know what activities, content, and programming are planned for the fall of 2024,” coinciding with the museum’s closing. Furthermore, workers have been critical of the museum’s eagerness to lend works across the globe, without regard for “context.”

Pompidou president Le Bon is “crisscrossing the planet with three jokers: Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, and Vassily Kandinsky,” one curator told Le Monde. “Hurling big names around without concern for context—that’s not art history. It’s the very negation of our work,” they added.

In their November letter, striking workers cited “perpetually increasing” physical damage to artworks constantly on the move. “The frantic race for [financial] resources sacrifices the fundamental mission of heritage conservation, putting our cultural heritage in danger,” stated the letter. The collection “is suffering from numerous damage caused by incessant loans, and the exponential increase of off-site projects, which are forever deteriorating the oeuvres which constitute French heritage.”

The roughly 147,000-piece museum collection will not only have to be moved to temporary locations over 2024, but most works will be shipped a second time to a new storage facility and art center being built in Massy, south of Paris, to open in 2026.

France’s minister of culture, and the museum’s director, maintain that it will all be worth it. “What we’re proposing is exceptional, and unique,” defended Le Bon in an October 24 press conference, noting things could be worse—the Pergamon Museum in Berlin is set to close for 14 years of renovations, he said.

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