Reappointed Wednesday as head of the Arab World Institute in Paris, after months of speculation, Jack Lang, 84, dreams of making this showcase of Arab culture in the West, which he has directed since 2013, a center of modern and contemporary world art.
This fourth mandate (of three years) was ratified by a “unanimous vote” of the board of directors, the latter announced in a press release. The statutes of the Arab World Institute (IMA) do not provide for an age limit or the number of mandates for its presidency, unlike other cultural institutions.
“Our ambition is to make the IMA the most important museum of modern and contemporary Arab art in the West, while remaining faithful to its primary mission of discovering Arab history, language and culture,” said explained to Agence France-Presse Jack Lang, who left his mark on France in the 1980s as minister of culture.
In 2018, the IMA benefited from an exceptional donation from the Lebanese gallery owner Claude Lemand, who gave it more than eighteen hundred works, including those by big names like the Algerian Abdallah Benanteur, the Syrian Youssef Abdelké and the American- Lebanese Etel Adnan, bringing its permanent collections to three thousand four hundred pieces. Only “two other institutions have larger funds than ours: Mathaf, in Doha, and Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates,” said Nathalie Bondil, director of the IMA museum and exhibitions department.
Exceptional grant
The announced metamorphosis, which will undoubtedly involve an “extension” of the museum, should be supplemented by “workshops and courses on modern and contemporary Arab art”, according to Mr. Lang, who also wishes to increase “the roaming” of temporary exhibitions and works “in France and internationally”.
To do this, the IMA, which depends on the Quai d’Orsay, benefited from an exceptional grant of 6 million euros over three years from the Ministry of Culture.
Appointed to his presidency in 2013 by the President of the Republic, François Hollande, to succeed Renaud Muselier, Jack Lang has since rectified an adrift institution, pinned down by the Court of Auditors in 2008, and whose budget, of “26 million euros with a profitable self-financing capacity”, is today “in balance”, he said.
His method: dynamic and profitable exhibitions, such as “Once Upon a Time on the Orient Express” (2014) or “The Divas of the Arab World” (2021); “strong links” established “between the IMA and the Museum of Art and History of Judaism”; as well as “exhibitions dedicated to the three great religions of the book” (Islam, Judaism, Christianity), which he readily cites among the “successes” of the programming.
Supported sponsorship policy
At the same time, this networker has developed a policy of patronage towards Arab countries. In 2017, Saudi Arabia announced its contribution of 5 million euros to the renovation of the IMA. “I will travel again to obtain contributions and co-productions from foreign museums,” he assured, citing the departure of the “Perfumes of the Orient” exhibition for Riyadh in May.
In terms of attendance, the number of visitors was more than 600,000 in 2022 and the IMA expects “an increase of around 15%” for 2023.
The result of a partnership between France and the Arab League countries, opened in 1987, the Arab World Institute is a private law foundation. If, from its creation, the idea of equal financing between Arab countries and France was the rule, it was abandoned at the end of the 1990s, certain countries having never paid their dues.
