Paris. Faced with a difficult economic and financial situation, with losses of 15 million euros in 2023, the Grand Palais RMN has decided to partially withdraw from its immersive exhibition activity that it had created with the Banque des Territoires and Vinci Immobilier in September 2022, in the “modular room” of the Opéra Bastille. Chargeurs Museum Studio (CMS) has acquired 52% of the capital and will manage it. The museum services department of the Chargeurs group is keeping the ten employees, entrusting their management to Delphine de Canecaude, the CEO of CMS, and will reinvest 3 million euros in the structure, an amount not confirmed by CMS.
“This subsidiary was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was no longer sustainable,” explains Didier Fusillier, the president of the Grand Palais, who already has his work cut out to fill the Grand Palais and generate enough profit to repay the loan for the work. He can already count on the success of the Paris Olympics and the global media exposure of the Palais, which hosted the fencing and taekwondo and offered an incomparable setting for the Marseillaise sung from its roof by Axelle Saint-Cirel during the opening ceremony. In this regard, it is noted that the brand (and activity) of the Réunion des musées nationaux (RMN) is gradually fading. Since the beginning of this year, the public establishment has been communicating under the name of GrandPalaisRmn.
However, he keeps an eye on the programming, which intends to stand out from the more playful exhibitions of the Ateliers des Lumières (its owner Culturespaces did not wish to comment on this investment) by combining immersive experience and serious content. The artists’ creative process constitutes a strong axis of the new editorial line, “We want to explain to the public the mystery of creation and encourage them to go and see the works in museums.”explains Delphine de Canecaude. The next exhibition planned for November will be a monograph of the pioneering digital artist Miguel Chevalier. This bias does not exclude exhibitions on fascinating cities such as the one on Venice in 2022. A dive into ancient Babylon has thus been announced.
Will this less entertaining positioning than that of the Ateliers des Lumières make it possible to reach the million annual visitors of the Ateliers? Today, the GPI exhibitions welcome on average 10 times fewer visitors. Aware of the difficulty of the challenge, CMS plans to develop festive evenings in order to attract the very large “young” public in the bars and restaurants in the district and thus generate another flow of revenue. CMS is also counting on the itinerancy of its exhibitions abroad. The catalog has five titles to its credit and will expand in the years to come, “There is a strong international demand,” explains the CEO of CMS. However, unlike its competitor, it does not intend to open branches around the world directly or as a franchise.
