FRANCE. Rachida Dati announced last January during her wishes to the press her intention to create “A great foundation for French contemporary art, based on a public-private legal model comparable to the Heritage Foundation”. Without doubt a doubt about the interest of this new structure, she commanded, in March, a report to Martin Bethenod under the pretext of a study on the strengthening of the French artistic scene. He knows the subject well for having been the former director of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) then of the Bours de Commerce-Pinault, but also in 2008 co-author of a report on the development of the art market in France. The brevity of the mission did not prevent it from concluding clearly, in its report made public in July, to the uselessness of such a foundation, with uncertain funding and destabilizing effects on existing structures.
It is one of these structures that he proposes to entrust more responsibilities in supporting the French scene: the National Center for Plastic Arts (CNAP). It is not new, in 2011, Frédéric Mitterrand, then Minister of Culture, announced “15 measures for the plastic arts” and among them, the “Federating role of CNAP ». This time, the measures are more concrete since one of them asks the CNAP to devote all of its acquisition budget to the artists of the French scene, while today it only allocates to them half. This recommendation would be carried out on an experimental basis for three years, without it being specified the factors that would make this experiment or not. The CNAP, led by Béatrice Salmon whose mandate ends on October 31, 2025, is also invited to build muscle its information site and its services to actors in the world of contemporary art and to simplify its support systems, in particular with galleries.
A definition of the French scene
The Center Pompidou and the Palais de Tokyo are also asked to support the French scene (in the broad sense, including foreign artists living and working in France). The Center Pompidou can continue to acquire international artists, but it is asked to exhibit at least 40 % of artists from the French scene, on the model of the Tokyo Palace erected as an example. For his part, the same Palais de Tokyo is invited to organize a support for the French scene. The report does not define the modalities, but recalls the ” Good “ example of the 2012 triennial and “Bad example” of the two previous editions of 2006 and 2009 entitled “The Force of Art”. Directed by Okwui enwezor, the triennial of 2012 was distinguished by its postcolonial dimension and the vast majority of artists of foreign scenes.
The recommendations for the support of the French scene outside the borders are less ambitious while the report rightly stresses that “ The share of artists of the French scene remains marginal on the prescribing area and the master market that are the United States ”. It is proposed that art schools invite more foreign teachers and that FRACs and art centers welcome more associated international commissioners by expecting that once returned to their country, these teachers and commissioners promote the French scene then better known to them. The reasoning is right but such a device can only have concrete effects in several years.
In the immediate future, the report mentions the little known European production poles (PEP), renowned last May “International Production and Diffusion (PIPD)”. These poles work a little on the model of the Gulbenkian Foundation (mentioned without being named in the report) which finances exhibitions and catalogs of Portuguese artists in places of dissemination of contemporary art of many countries … but with the very French bureaucratic complexity. These poles bring together several structures which pool their means in order to produce shows abroad. Until now, the ancient PEPs only concerned the performing arts. The 11 new PIPDs now include a visual art pole called “Ecotone”, made up of the Regional Contemporary Art Fund (FRAC) and the Center for Contemporary Plastic Arts (CAPC) in Bordeaux and the Center for Contemporary Art in Ivry-sur-Seine (Crédac). We do not know the additional subsidy paid to Ecotone to produce exhibitions abroad. The report proposes to draw inspiration from this system for other FRACs and art centers and evokes an annual budget of € 200,000 to € 400,000 or € 20,000 per labeled location.
Martin Bethenod (with the contribution of Anne-Marie Le Guével, inspector general of cultural affairs) made the effort to calculate the cost of certain measures. It is not huge, less than 5 million euros, more than two -thirds of which for a new three -year -old. The refocusing of CNAP acquisitions would inject around € 800,000 into the circuit. We are very far from the 30 million euros in the forgettable (and moreover not renewed) “large public procurement” of the recovery plan, renamed “new worlds”. The report focuses only on supply and not at all demand (collectors). We are now awaiting the decisions that will be made by the Minister or his successor.
The Maison des Artistes (MDA) organizes, on September 13 and 14, a new event that it hopes to perpetuate in time. Throughout France, artists but also places of dissemination of contemporary art are invited to open their doors to the public. A website lists participating places. The day before, the MDA organizes during the afternoon a conference at the Salomon de Rothschild hotel in Paris, made up of three round tables on the place and the status of artists in our companies faced with new challenges.
