Unlike other times in history, art has always been at the forefront. Fairs keep works of art moving from one country to another, but that is the creativity of the dealer. Large museums, usually located in large municipal areas, have also taken the initiative to lend long-term objects that have ended up in smaller, often mostly rural, institutions. There is the National Gallery of Art’s “Across the Nation” program and, recently, the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden—in partnership with the Art Bridges Foundation—announced a three- to five-year loan program called “50 for 50” that will place works of art in art museums in all 50 states of Puerto Rico.
Then there are the outdoor areas of the museum. The Guggenheim in New York City and the Center Pompidou in Paris plan to open branches in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and Seoul, South Korea, respectively. The former center led the way with the satellite Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which opened in 1997, and the Deutsche Bank center in Berlin in the same year. This was followed by the Louvre opening a branch in Abu Dhabi in 2017. In 2028, MoMA will launch what it calls a “partnership” with Hong Kong’s M+.
“These are not just cultural investments – they are tools of economic strategy and soft power,” Maria Elena Gutierrez, founder and president of the Chora Group, a consulting firm that works with museums on strategy, governance and financial sustainability, told the Observer. “Cities like Abu Dhabi, Seoul and Bilbao enter into formal relationships with internationally recognized institutions, using the name, collections and management authority of names like the Louvre, Pompidou and Guggenheim to accelerate their position on the world cultural stage.”
And these cities really pay off. Abu Dhabi licensed the use of the Louvre brand for 20 years at a cost of 700 million euros to the French state, while Pompidou Hanwha in Seoul paid France 20 million euros for a four-year deal. As public enterprises, the Louvre and Pompidou museums are responsible for making these arrangements public, while the privately owned Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art are not, and both declined requests for more information about the deals.
However, not all museum outpost programs have happy endings. Earlier this year, Pompidou canceled plans to build a satellite museum in Jersey City, New Jersey, after the mayor announced that the city had a $255 million deficit, making any payments to the French museum impossible. But Jersey City had already paid $20 million in consulting fees and another $4.5 million to Center Pompidou for licensing and advertising rights before the faucet ran dry.
Besides attracting Western travelers, Gutierrez speculated that cities in countries like the UAE and China—which have a more liberal attitude toward politics and social freedom than the US and Europe—view these museums as “opportunities to explore neutral communities.”
On the other hand, there are Western museums looking to their future. “Museums are struggling to make ends meet, with declining attendance, rising costs and declining support,” Maxwell Anderson, former director of the Whitney and current president of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, told the Observer. “These outdoor spaces are designed to attract resources and visitors.” He added that “expansion, for the most part, is ill-advised unless governments are prepared to bear the cost.”
Different agencies have different reasons for establishing or approving an offsite. “I think it’s important to understand that different partnerships have different motivations,” said Stephan Jost, director of the Art Gallery of Ontario and former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors. “It is clear that the French Empire is very smart in using the power of culture and cooperation to strengthen its position in the world. This has real economic benefits for Paris. That is very different from the Guggenheim, which is an independent organization that uses its product, technology and culture to create destinations in places like the UAE”
The Guggenheim Bilbao is probably better known for its Frank Gehry-designed building than the artwork inside, which Gutierrez says is to be expected. “What’s inside is not always a work of art”—in part because the directors of these museums don’t want to remove the works of art that their visitors pay to see, and because some of the outdoor spaces are located in regions that may experience political instability. “You have to protect against acts of war,” he said, adding that Western museums often “offer two or three well-known works of art” to these leases.
Artworks that express nudity or political opposition are unlikely to be displayed at these partner institutions, Anderson said. “External spaces in places without guarantees of freedom of expression are inherently limited in what they will express,” and institutions like the Guggenheim, Louvre, MoMA and Pompidou are more likely to censor themselves than face actual scrutiny.
When contacted by the Observer, neither the Museum of Modern Art nor the Guggenheim would comment on the artworks they plan to show in Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi, while the Center Pompidou was also tight-lipped. However, according to Julie Narbey, the museum’s general manager in Paris, the opening exhibition, entitled “The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision,” “will include 92 works from the modern collections of the Center Pompidou. This includes works of art that are often exhibited, as well as works that are rarely exhibited.” He added that “The exhibitions of the Center Pompidou are organized with curatorial independence.”
Of course, not all outfields are power sports, and some last longer than others—usually for financial reasons. The Whitney Museum, for example, had a satellite branch at Altria Group headquarters in Manhattan from 1983 to 2008, which closed when Altria relocated and ended its philanthropic art offerings. For the previous decade, from 1973 to 1983, the museum operated a satellite at 55 Water Street, a building owned by Harold Uris, who leased the museum for $1 a year. Whitney also had branches in Maiden Lane, Equitable Tower and Stamford, Connecticut.
The Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, which opened at Deutsche Bank in 1997, closed in 2013. The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art operated the Pacific Design Center for 20 years, closing it in 2019, while the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego opened a downtown branch in 2007, which it sold two years ago. In 2024, Fotografiska, a Swedish network of photography museums, closed its Gramercy Park location in Manhattan after five years, saying it was looking for a new site that had yet to be found. In 2021, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art closed the Fort Mason Artists Gallery as part of Covid-related budget cuts. On the other hand, the Museum of Modern Art acquired an existing art space in 2000—the PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens—which it continues to use to host many experimental exhibitions to this day.
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