A French Museum Collides With New Jersey Politics

Plans to build an outpost of the Pompidou Center in the heart of Jersey City were put on hold after the State Legislature voted last week to rescind $24 million in funding for the Paris museum’s project.

Another $34 million in state and federal assistance for what would have been the Pompidou’s first satellite location in North America was also put in jeopardy by the vote.

Tim Sullivan, chief executive of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, addressed a letter to museum officials saying that the project was called off.

“Due to the ongoing impact of Covid and multiple global conflicts on the supply chain, rising costs, an irreconcilable operating gap and the corresponding financial burdens it will create for New Jersey’s taxpayers, the Legislature has rescinded financial support,” Mr. Sullivan wrote, “leaving us to determine that this project is unfortunately no longer feasible.”

Steve Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City and a major supporter of the museum, blamed the cuts instead on his deteriorating relationship with the state’s governor, Phil Murphy, who had supported the Centre Pompidou x Jersey City initiative when it was announced in 2021 as a way to attract tourists and New Yorkers into a rapidly developing neighborhood.

Mr. Fulop said the situation changed after he rescinded his support for Tammy Murphy, the governor’s wife, in the state’s Democratic primary to replace Senator Robert Menendez, who is on trial for federal bribery charges. In March, Mr. Fulop pledged support for Representative Andy Kim, saying his initial endorsement of Tammy Murphy was “wrong.”

“There is no question in my mind that this is directly related to my support of Andy Kim,” Mr. Fulop said of the state’s decision to withdraw funding. (Mr. Fulop is also running in next year’s governor’s race to replace Mr. Murphy, who has reached his term limits.)

Natalie Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the governor, referred to comments he made to reporters in April. “This has literally zero to do with any politics,” Mr. Murphy said.

Ben Dworkin, a professor of political science at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., said that while some public officials had questioned the Pompidou plan since its inception, the latest developments were a sign of the growing rift between the governor and mayor. “It is a convenient point of battle,” said Mr. Dworkin, who called it “one more notch in an ongoing feud.”

While both the city and state agreed that the museum’s $176 million in construction costs would be fully funded by public money, they disagreed about the annual operating budget. The city said that $19 million in annual expenses would be covered by ticketing, venue rentals, donations and a proposed tax on new buildings in the area. But the state, which recently passed a $56.7 billion budget, viewed that amount as a regular deficit.

“As we sit here now, we still love the project,” Mr. Murphy told reporters in April, “but we can’t marry ourselves to a $19 million deficit forever and always.”

Records from the governor’s office showed that the New Jersey Economic Development Authority had been questioning the project’s feasibility in early March, discussing the possibility of withdrawing the funding.

“From the top of the administration and down, this is something where we think the idea is an extraordinary idea,” Mr. Sullivan said in an interview. “Where the rubber hits the road has been the math on the money. That’s just not working out, unfortunately.”

In a letter to the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency, Michael Greco, the deputy executive director at New Jersey’s state department, asked the city to return an additional $6 million in funding allocated to the museum.

“Because the project is no longer viable and none of the disbursed funds have been expended, we ask that you return the funds to the state,” Mr. Greco wrote.

The Pompidou outpost was intended to become a jewel of Journal Square, a section of Jersey City that has received more than a billion dollars in private and public development deals in recent years. In 2021, the Fulop administration hired the architecture firm OMA to transform a 58,000-square-foot former transport hub, known as the Pathside Building, into a cultural center.

The satellite was originally expected to open there in 2024 — a year before the museum’s Paris headquarters closed for renovations — but an economic impact report about the museum that was commissioned by Jersey City this year said the target date was 2027.

While state and federal agencies would have provided much of the outpost’s funding, the museum’s galleries would have benefited from access to the Paris museum’s collection of more than 140,000 modern and contemporary artworks. (The Pompidou already has locations in Belgium and China, with others planned for Saudi Arabia and South Korea.)

In a statement on Monday, a spokesman for the Pompidou Center said the museum “remains committed to ongoing discussions with the mayor of Jersey City to jointly determine the project’s future direction.”

Mr. Fulop said that his team was looking at alternative locations for the museum in Journal Square, but that sticking to the original plan was currently impossible.

“This would have been a cultural center that enhanced the entire region,” the mayor said, “but it’s not possible without the governor and the state as partners.”

Several patrons have recently come forward to say they had planned to donate money for the museum. They include the sculptor Sassona Norton and Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor whose company has helped build a skyscraper in Journal Square.

“The role that great cultural institutions like the Pompidou play in urban life is enormous, and bringing a museum of that stature and magnitude with its world-class collection to Jersey City would be wonderful,” Mr. Spitzer said.

But some local residents were skeptical about the Pompidou’s future because of the high costs of running a museum.

Amy Wilson, an artist who lives near Journal Square, recalled that the Jersey City Museum closed in 2010 because of financial difficulties and thin support from philanthropists.

“I don’t want to have a second museum fail,” Ms. Wilson said. “That would be absolutely devastating to anyone in the arts community in Jersey City if we became the place where museums come to die.”