Laurent Le Bon, president of the Center Pompidou in Paris, on March 14 signed an agreement with the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) to establish a massive branch of the contemporary art museum in the rapidly growing region of AlUla in Saudi Arabia. . The outpost will be the fourth for the Pompidou, whose tendrils are already reaching Metz, France; Malaga, Spain; and Shanghai. The new institution will focus on art from Southwest Asia, North Africa and South Asia, with an emphasis on Land art and 21st century digital art. In addition, the RCU will commission immersive installations and public art works from Arab and international artists. The Pompidou Institute indicated in a press release that it “would provide its scientific and technical expertise in the training of staff, particularly in the areas of collection conservation management and mediation. It can also provide support for the organization of cultural programming and events.
The proposed project is the latest in a series of artistic initiatives following a 2018 agreement between the French government of Emanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to establish AlUla, a desert region in north- western Saudi Arabia along the historic Silk and Frankincense Road. and is home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Hegra, as a cultural and tourist center. This agreement – on which Macron double following what the UN Human Rights Watch described as the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, has already borne fruit in the form of the Parisian agency Afalula, which places “French know-how” in the development department of AlUla.
The cultural agreement with France is part of a larger initiative known as Vision 2030, launched by bin Salman with the aim of diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil and establishing a more progressive cultural profile for the country. The move is seen by some as an attempt by the Saudi government to ‘wash the art’ register of human rights violations.
