Kanal-Centre Pompidou, assured opening, long-term uncertainty

The very recent appointment of the new government for the Brussels Region, after 614 days of blockage, was impatiently awaited by Kanal-Centre Pompidou, because the future of the museum, which is currently entirely financed by public funds, depends on it. In the short term, it’s a relief. The museum will open on November 28 and the sums necessary for the completion of the project will be paid.

But for the future management of the museum, uncertainty remains. In accordance with the current management contract signed with the Region, the museum will benefit from 28 million per year until 2028. But after? In an interview on the set of the regional media BX1, Dirk De Smedt (of the Flemish liberal party Anders), big financier of the region, affirms that, from 2029, annual subsidies will be capped at 10 million. The Regional Policy Declaration, a succinct 24-page document, does not specifically mention it, limiting itself to writing that “in connection with a new financial management contract which will be adopted, the government wants to work on a new approach, among other things on questions of governance and financial management partnership”.

Also present during this interview, Benjamin Dalle, CD & V MP (Flemish center-right political party) and observer without mandate within the government estimated that the museum should completely review its model and that the partnership with the Center Pompidou “wasn’t a good idea”.

At the Kanal Foundation, we try to remain calm by noting that at this stage, no concrete and official communication has reached them on the way in which future financing will be envisaged. “What was said in this interview concerns 2029 and is political speculation. We are ourselves in the concrete » explains David Salomonowicz, press manager of Kanal.

Many things therefore remain to be discussed. It is also clear that given its size and ambition, the museum complex as imagined will not be able to be satisfied with an operating subsidy of 10 million euros. The museum has estimated its share of own revenues at 15 million, but if the museum’s ambition is revised downwards, revenues will also decline. The Kanal project would then have to reinvent itself from top to bottom.