Agents of the Center Pompidou refuse the art-washing of the arms industry
On June 4, the Pompidou Center will inaugurate a new branch in Seoul operating under the name “Pompidou Hanwha”. Behind this partnership, presented as an international cultural cooperation project, is one of the main South Korean arms conglomerates, whose activities include the production of missiles, explosives and military systems.
This choice is not trivial. It reveals how far public cultural institutions are now prepared to go to finance their developmentat the cost of an ever more assumed confusion between cultural diplomacy, brand strategy and industrial interests linked to the war economy.
We, agents of the Center Pompidou, refuse that the name of our institution be associated with a company that thrives on the war economy
Since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza after the attacks of October 7, 2023, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed according to numerous international organizations: an immense majority of civilians, including thousands of children, journalists, caregivers and teachers. Entire neighborhoods were razed, hospitals, universities, refugee camps and cultural infrastructures bombed. Added to this destruction is now a famine organized by the blockade and the obstruction of humanitarian aid. At the same time, bombings and military operations are also intensifying in southern Lebanon, causing new civilian victims.
In this context, seeing the Center Pompidou join forces with a conglomerate that has seen its stock market value explode with the intensification of armed conflicts and genocide in Palestine constitutes a major moral and political scandal.
Management openly assumes the financial dimension of these international partnerships, presented as a strategic resource for the establishment. But this logic of expansion under increasing dependence on private financing has an obvious political cost: that of a public institution which now agrees to associate its name, its prestige and its symbolic authority with industrial groups directly linked to armaments or regularly questioned for their social practices. Because Hanwha is unfortunately not an isolated case. The recent partnership announced with Chanel is part of the same cynical logic. The luxury group is regularly criticized for the opacity of its globalized supply chains and for its indirect links with companies accused of using forced labor of Uighurs in China. Here again, the image of art and culture serves to symbolically whitewash economic interests in total opposition to human rights.
We refuse to allow museums to become globalized brands offered to the most sordid private interests. We refuse that art is used to legitimize multinationals that thrive on war, destruction, exploitation and social violence
The role of a public museum is not to serve as a progressive front for industrial groups or
financiers using soft power and seeking prestige.
Today we feel anger, discomfort and shame. Shame to see the name of the Center Pompidou associated with industries of death or with groups regularly called into question for their social practices. Shame to see discourses on emancipation, avant-gardes and international solidarity coexist with economic interests directly linked to contemporary logics of domination.
We ask:
- the termination of the partnership with Hanwha;
- an immediate public debate on the ethical criteria for Center Pompidou partnerships;
- public funding commensurate with the missions of cultural institutions;
- where applicable: complete transparency on the financial agreements linking the Center Pompidou to Hanwha and its other major private partners.
Culture cannot become the humanist veneer of the war economy
Beaubourg South Section
May 28, 2026
