The Centre Pompidou Foundation: L.A.’s pipeline to Paris

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The Pompidou Center is the Parisian place to go for sprawling thematic exhibitions of modern and contemporary art and Europe’s largest collection of art made in the 20th and 21st centuries. As might be expected, the museum at the Pompidou is a bastion of national pride that draws its financial lifeblood from the French government. But the museum gets a little help from a group of American friends.

The Centre Pompidou Foundation, which allows donors to reap tax benefits, acquires and encourages gifts of American art and design for the museum’s permanent collection. Though far from the only U.S. group lending a hand to a major overseas museum, all the others are headquartered in New York. The Pompidou’s is the only organization of its kind based in Los Angeles.

Why?

‘It’s a city of the future. It just felt right,’ says the foundation’s executive director, Scott Stover. A New York-educated Francophile who lived in Paris for about 30 years, he agreed to revivify the then-dormant group in 2005. That meant moving back to the U.S., to the city of his choice.

Since 2006, the foundation has brought in donations of American artworks collectively valued at $14 million and purchased many others. In 2008 alone, individuals donated about $5 million in art and the group bought works by 12 artists, including a bronze sculpture by Robert Gober, an installation by Hannah Wilke and a mixed-media, sculptural self-portrait by Jorge Pardo.

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-- Suzanne Muchnic