The Centre national d?art et de culture Georges Pompidou was conceived by President Georges Pompidou, whose aim was to create an original cultural institution of modern and contemporary creation in the heart of Paris. In a building designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, the Pompidou Centre first opened its doors to the public in 1977. It houses one of Europe?s leading collections of modern and contemporary art, a vast public reference library with over 2,000 work spaces, general documentation on 20th-century art, cinema and performance halls, an institute for musical research, educational activity areas, bookshops, a restaurant and a café. It has become one of the most frequently visited cultural institutions in France, with six million people now passing annually through its doors.
Inspired by the type of subscription schemes already in use in the performing arts in France, an annual membership scheme known as the ?Laissez-passer? pass was introduced when the Centre first opened. The scheme aimed to help achieve several goals: to inform and educate the public, to ensure the diffusion of artistic creations, and to foster social communication. Its success is now legendary. A membership base of 50,000 annual subscribers has been established, and 2,000 ambassadors have been appointed to act as intermediaries between the institution and its public. More than half a million residents of Paris and its surrounding area have at one time or another been holders of the pass over the past 20 years, and as a result a whole generation has become familiar with modern and contemporary art.
The scheme has had a substantial effect on patterns of use of the Centre by the local public, and on the involvement of employers, works councils and workers? organisations in its activities. This was something entirely new in the museum field. The pass had nothing to do with museum membership schemes as ordinarily understood, which are intended to help provide financial support, and which grant more special privileges the more one pays. Instead, the card was made available at the lowest possible cost, and permitted a year?s access to everything at the Centre: permanent collections, temporary exhibitions, cinema, lecture series, and the postal newsletter. Members enjoyed not privileges, but rights: the right to feel at home and to be treated as a collaborator, a citizen who mattered. And under this agreement, the institution incurred not financial benefits, but responsibilities.
What then was so special about the Pompidou pass? Its virtue, quite simply, was to inspire in its holder a state of mind that enabled access to culture. The museum put itself forward as open to all. This was made evident in its architecture, its transparency, its openness to the street, its opening hours (every night until 10.00pm), its low admission charges, its educational activities (all free of charge), and its annual membership scheme, with a personalised membership card, photograph, and newsletter delivered to the door. All of this lifted the passer-by out of anonymity. Everyone could feel at home, cared about, and at the same time free to do as they wished.
In ten years the Pompidou annual pass became irreversibly entrenched; and today, from the Musée d?Orsay, to La Villette, to the Louvre, every new and renewed museum has a membership scheme. Membership takes its meaning from an exchange between the two partners, one not over in a moment like a commercial transaction, but a long-term commitment. A personal connection is established; and for many ? for young people, for the self-taught, for women at home, for displaced populations ? the Pompidou Centre has become a place of life, of openness, and of integration.
This article is based on an address by Claude Fourteau, Special Advisor to the Director at the Musée du Louvre, which was presented at the inaugural conference of the Audiences Europe Network in York last month. A full report of the conference is available to members and further details of the Network can be found at http://www.audienceseurope.net