A range of well-known French artists signed an open letter on Wednesday that sought a boycott of the Centre Pompidou’s soon-to-be-inaugurated Seoul satellite museum in protest of a partner foundation’s ties to Israel.
Opening on June 4, the museum is officially known as the Centre Pompidou Hanhwa, its name referring to the Hanwha Foundation of Culture, an arts-focused subsidiary of the Hanwha Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Korea. In 2021, the Hanwha Group previously struck ties with Elbit Systems and Elta Systems, two Israeli firms. Elbit Systems, which is reportedly Israel’s largest defense contractor, recently signed a $100 million contract with Israel’s defense department.
The Hanhwa Foundation has attempted to distance itself from Israel’s military operations and the Hanwha Group’s activities more broadly, telling the Art Newspaper in 2024, “Neither Hanwha Aerospace nor Hanwha Systems are involved in any activities that would draw the condemnation of the international community and neither company has exported weapons to Israel.”
Still, the Hanwha Group’s partnership with Elbit Systems and Elta Systems has repeatedly drawn scrutiny in the run-up to the opening of the Centre Pompidou Hanhwa, whose inauguration has been explicitly billed as an attempt to affirm ties between South Korea and France.
First published as an op-ed by the French publication Libération, the new open letter alleges that the museum is “an ‘art-washing’ operation masking profits derived from armed conflicts.”
“Because this constitutes a moral compromise of cultural institutions, contributing to the normalization of wartime violence, we call for the termination of this partnership and urge artists and cultural workers to mobilize against it publicly,” the petition reads.
It was signed by artists such as Ali Cherri, who won the Venice Biennale’s Silver Lion for a promising young artist in 2022, and Lili Reynaud-Dewar, who won the Pompidou-facilitated Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2021. Also among the signatories were Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, a Palestinian Jewish photography theorist of Algerian descent; Mounir Fatmi, a Moroccan-born artist who produces films, drawings, and installations; Théo Mercier, a French sculptor whose work for the Diriyah Biennale of Contemporary Art was widely praised; and Élisabeth Lebovici, a French art critic and art historian.
The petition demands an end to the Pompidou’s partnership with the Hanhwa Foundation. A Pompidou representative did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Libération published the op-ed on the same day that the Centre Pompidou Hanwha acted as a stage for a runway show by Chanel. The show drew attendees such as Tilda Swinton, Marion Cotillard, Jennie, and G-Dragon.
A similar protest has also focused on Space ZeroOne, a New York art space that receives sponsorship from the Hanwha Foundation of Culture. In February, an activist group called the Korean Cultural Alliance for Palestine asked artist Michael Joo to cancel his exhibition there; the show ultimately went on as planned. A representative for the group told Artnet News at the time that “Hanwha thinks Korean artist communities and their consumers are fools.”
