The Center Pompidou is closed on Monday October 16 due to a staff strike. The latter wish to obtain guarantees on the sustainability of posts and missions during its closure for five years from 2025, Agence France-Presse learned from consistent sources.
The management of the Center Pompidou, which houses, in addition to the modern art museum, a library and a number of cultural mediation spaces, confirmed the closure of its doors on Monday “due to a strike movement relating to the redeployment of positions during and after the closure” of the structure.
“Around a thousand people working in security, mediation, conservation, publishing, cinema or administrative and technical services are affected by this closure and are asking for guarantees on the sustainability of their positions and their missions,” explained Nathalie Ramos of the National Union of Museums and Estates CGT-Culture.
A complete renovation
A negotiation meeting between the inter-union (CFDT, CGT, FO, UNSA, SUD), the management of the Center Pompidou and the Ministry of Culture “has yielded nothing so far”, according to this official, and “a notice of strike renewable for one month has been filed”. The unions are asking for “guarantees and written commitments concerning the payroll, redeployment, but also the maintenance of positions and the continuity of public service, fearing outsourcing,” she said.
Faced with the wear and tear of its building, the Center Pompidou in Paris, also called Beaubourg, which was inaugurated almost half a century ago, will close for works from the end of 2025 to 2030, an estimated complete renovation to more than 260 million euros.
Ultra modern for its time, the building was designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers: a glass and metal structure penetrated by light, it is irrigated by monumental, brightly colored arteries.
It is one of the most important modern and contemporary art museums in the world. Its collections bring together more than 140,000 works, from Marc Chagall to Pablo Picasso, including Frida Kahlo and Joan Miro.