It\u2019s a good thing that there is a balance between the private and the public<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In bare numbers alone, not to mention glamour and prestige, this art-world coup suggests that France\u2019s cultural sector is in rude health. Certainly, to the casual art-goer visiting the French capital there is little that distinguishes the private Bourse de Commerce and Fondation Cartier from the neighbouring national museums.<\/p>\n
However, buoyant private prosperity stands in contrast to widespread uncertainty in the public sector over looming austerity measures. Chaos has engulfed the French body politic since the summer, as successive governments have attempted, and failed, to pass a budget for 2026 that adequately reckons with the country\u2019s perilous debt reaching 114% of GDP, at \u20ac3.4 trillion. Within that budgetary context, the cost of private investment in the arts cannot be ignored. Private art foundations have been repeatedly criticised for contributing to fiscal deduction\u2014that is, to a loss to the public purse.<\/p>\n
Budget crisis<\/p>\n
In early October, President Emanuel Macron\u2019s fifth new prime minister in three years\u2014S\u00e9bastian Lecornu \u2014 resigned just one month into his tenure and within 24 hours of his cabinet choices being confirmed. He was then promptly recalled to his post, four days later, and tasked with, yet again, forming a government. (Rachida Dati has remained in place as culture minister throughout, a remarkably steady presence.)<\/p>\n
Lecornu\u2019s immediate predecessors Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou and Michel Barnier were ousted by no-confidence votes after nine and three months, respectively, and a 2025 budget process so fraught it resulted in a \u201cspecial law\u201d being adopted to avoid a government shutdown. The far-right National Rally and Union of the Right for the Republic and far-left France Unbowed immediately filed censure motions, making clear that their end game is to topple not Lecornu so much as Macron himself.<\/p>\n
Pundits and political scientists alike described the electorate\u2019s astonishment and disgust at the ongoing quagmire. \u201cThere is a profound rupture,\u201d Bruno Cautr\u00e8s, a fellow at the Institut Montaigne, told national radio station France Inter, \u201cas if politics were incapable of attending to [the people\u2019s] concrete problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bayrou\u2019s downfall was prompted by his proposal, in July, to implement radical austerity measures: \u201cFrance has become the world\u2019s biggest spender of public money,\u201d he said, insisting the necessary \u20ac44bn in cuts be a collective burden. \u201cOur country is working and believes it\u2019s getting richer,\u201d he subsequently told parliament. \u201cBut every year it gets a little poorer.\u201d This he described as \u201ca silent, subterraneous, invisible and unbearable haemorrhage\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, the discontent that got him ousted, by 364 votes to 194 in the Assembl\u00e9e Nationale, resides in the fact that most saw his proposed cuts as likely to impact those who can least afford them, a criticism levelled at Macron himself. Further primary partisan disagreements concern Macron\u2019s much maligned pension reform and a proposed 2% wealth tax on fortunes of over \u20ac100m that the Left is determined to make a deal-breaker. The so-called \u201cZucman tax\u201d was approved by the Assembl\u00e9e Nationale in February only to be rejected by the senate in June. In an interview with Le Monde in September, the French economist Gabriel Zucman, who devised the tax, was confident that this would not happen again, for one simple reason: the electorate agrees with him. \u201cBillionaires, taking into account all mandatory levies, pay half as much in taxes as the average French citizen,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is because their income, held in holding companies, is exempt from income tax.\u201d<\/p>\n
By contrast, Bernard Arnault, France\u2019s richest man and the owner of the luxury brand LVMH and founder of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, told the Sunday Times in September that adopting the tax would do nothing less than \u201cdestroy the liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of\u00a0all\u201d.<\/p>\n
Philanthropy criticised<\/p>\n
The Fondation Cartier is a stellar example of the French private sector\u2019s cultural clout, which in recent months has also seen the Fragonard perfumers group open its seventh museum; the Lafayette group poach the director of Art Basel Paris to head up its own foundation, Lafayette Anticipations; and LVMH\u2019s Fondation Louis Vuitton stage an unprecedented Gerhard Richter retrospective, hot on the heels of its acclaimed David Hockney show, which attracted nearly one million visitors. Meanwhile, in August, Guillaume Cerutti, the president of the Pinault Collection, proposed the creation of a European fund of \u20ac50m for museum acquisitions to the European Commission\u2014an initiative that feels quite ministerial for someone without a mandate.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ed14e18dde15019b668f16e8cf5686b41c040049-1536x1152.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Fondation Cartier\u2019s revamp of the Louvre des Antiquaires is estimated to have cost up to \u20ac250m; meanwhile, public spending on culture has fallen\u00a0dramatically<\/p>\n
Photo: \u00a9 Martin Argyroglo<\/p>\n
France\u00a0has one of the world\u2019s most attractive fiscal regimes for corporate and individual giving. Since the enactment of the 2003 Aillagon law, companies have benefited from 60% tax rebates on gifts below \u20ac20,000 or 0.5% of annual turnover, whichever is higher; for those with annual turnovers exceeding \u20ac400m, which give over \u20ac2m, the rate comes down to 40%. For gifts that exceed those caps, the excess can nonetheless be spread over five years, so there is still a clear tax benefit.<\/p>\n
In 2018, the Cour des Comptes\u2014France\u2019s supreme audit institution\u2014found LVMH had received \u20ac518.1m in tax cuts for the first 11 fiscal years of the Fondation Louis Vuitton \u2014 that is, \u20ac47.1m per year. \u201cWhy, diable,\u201d says the Sorbonne political scientist Jean-Michel Tobelem, \u201cshould the French taxpayer contribute financially to the Fondation Louis Vuitton?\u201d Philanthropy has a role to play, to be sure. Individuals and businesses alike are free to do as they please. But it is an altogether different proposition to have the average citizen, as Tobelem puts it, \u201chelp you be generous\u201d.<\/p>\n
Philanthropy comes in many sizes. Claude Bonnin, the president of the non-profit Association for the International Diffusion of French Art (Adiaf), proffers an important caveat. \u201cI think that in France, it\u2019s a good thing that there is a balance between the private and the public, if only to ensure a diversity of actions, a diversity of choice. Otherwise, there is always the risk of having something like state art.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2000, Adiaf created the Marcel Duchamp Prize. The award comprises an exhibition with a catalogue for the four nominees, a two-year residency for one of them and a \u20ac35,000 grant for the winner, all of which is subsidised by member dues and private donations, with only marginal help from the state. In other words, for the French art scene, it is a big deal, and it is privately funded.<\/p>\n
But Bonnin also points out that not all is well within philanthropy either. This summer, the Fondation Carmignac put on hold its annual photojournalism award and the Fondation Pernod Ricard, its 25-year-old prize. The latter cited changes in the art world but, as Bonnin notes, the drinks giant Pernod Ricard has seen declining sales, too. This follows the foundation of the property developer Groupe Emerige ending its R\u00e9v\u00e9lations grant, in place since 2014, amid concerns over the housing market. Within the art market, Bonnin notes a distinct unease: \u201cEven those who have means are being timid, as investors, as consumers\u2014they\u2019re being careful across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local government arts funding<\/p>\n
Macron\u2019s pro-business, neoliberal policies have created an environment that is favourable to private investment. He has also, in the case of the country\u2019s built heritage, called explicitly for philanthropic contributions. But philanthropy, by definition, has no public mission, collective or territorial, of its own. It will always be unequally distributed.<\/p>\n
Indeed, most big-ticket foundations are in Paris, though there are institutions such as Luma Arles, which have invested in the wider country, too. The commercial operator Culturespaces, meanwhile, has been contracted by local councils to take over museums such as the Mus\u00e9e Jacquemart-Andr\u00e9 in Paris, art centres including Caumont Centre d\u2019Art in Aix-en-Provence and cultural attractions like the Palais des Papes in Avignon or the Carri\u00e8res des Lumi\u00e8res in Les Baux-de-Provence. In recent years, scholars have highlighted the attractiveness of such private cultural investment at the local government level, where budget cuts are taking their toll.<\/p>\n
In 2024, according to the Observatoire des politiques culturelles\u2019s annual report, which is based on a sample of 202 collectivit\u00e9s territoriales and intercommunalit\u00e9s (regional administrative entities) most sought to maintain their culture spending. However, relative to 2023, twice as many r\u00e9gions and d\u00e9partements reduced theirs. And across all the report\u2019s respondents, only 14% sought to raise their cultural running cost budgets (discounting salaries) in line with inflation. Further, fewer collectivit\u00e9s raised their preliminary cultural running costs budgets-\u2014and more reduced them\u2014than did in 2023, a double trend, the report says, which \u201ccould be interpreted as a sign of a political deprioritisation of culture in budgetary decision-making.\u201d Fears over the 2026 national budget are now compounded by the prospect of imminent municipal elections in March.<\/p>\n
Emmanuel N\u00e9grier, a cultural policy expert at the Universit\u00e9 de Montpellier, points out that politics, and not financial urgency, seem to be dictating some budgetary decisions at the collectivit\u00e9 level, such as the H\u00e9rault d\u00e9partement\u2019s surprise announcement of 100% cuts on all non-compulsory culture spending for 2025. \u201cSome d\u00e9partements, and it isn\u2019t necessarily the richest, have made the decision to raise their culture budgets while others have considered it to be an absolute constraint.\u201d<\/p>\n
For N\u00e9grier, this represents \u201ca paradigm shift in the relationship between elected officials and culture\u201d. This is what many arts professionals fear: that, among the ranks of those who do have a public mandate, some on the Right are shifting away from what N\u00e9grier describes as \u201c66 years of cross-party consensus on the need to support culture\u201d. He adds: \u201cInstead of seeking to gain public acceptance through supporting culture, they\u2019re trying to legitimise themselves by attacking it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Philanthropy, N\u00e9grier says, \u201cdevelops in completely unequal fashion, in a country where, already, regional inequalities are rife\u201d. Cultural economists since the 1950s have plainly stated that a nation\u2019s culture must be a national, political project. That value needs urgent, renewed protection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visitors to the Rue de Rivoli this autumn have a scintillating newcomer to add to their dance cards.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,17425,285,100978],"class_list":{"0":"post-516672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-philanthropy","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-private-museums"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115411523803642477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}