Maya Pontone (Hyperallergic, 14 July 2025) reports on the Centre Pompidou-Metz’s decision to cancel the exhibition “ Van lévé. Visions souveraines des Amériques et de l’Amazonie créoles et marronnes (Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique et Haïti).”  The exhibition was slated to run from October 31, 2026, to April 5, 2027. Pontone writes, “Guadeloupean curator Claire Tancons called it a ‘brutal and shocking’ decision and over 100 people signed a letter in protest.”

Nearly 150 artists, curators, and other cultural figures signed an open letter denouncing the Centre Pompidou-Metz’s decision to abruptly call off an exhibition centering on contemporary Franco-Creole, Caribbean French, and Guyanese art. The cancellation, which was formalized in a June 10 notice, followed months of planning and a series of tense text message exchanges between the museum’s director Chiara Parisi and guest curator Claire Tancons, Le Monde reported.

Slated to run from the end of October 2026 through the beginning of April 2027, the survey Van Lévé: Sovereign Visions from the Maroon and Creole Americas and Amazonia would have gathered the works of dozens of artists from across the French Caribbean region, including Julien Creuzet, who represented France at last year’s Venice Biennale; Gaëlle Choisne, who won last year’s Prix Marcel Duchamp; and the late Haitian-born painter Hervé Télémaque, Libération reported.

In late May, Tancons raised concerns to Parisi about an overlap between the runtime of Van Lévé and Maurizio Cattelan’s ongoing Endless Sunday exhibition, which is scheduled to run through February 2, 2027. The latter displays the artist’s 36-foot marble middle-finger sculpture “L.O.V.E.” (2010) in one of the same galleries where the group survey of Caribbean art would be partially held. Parisi told Tancons that the two shows would have to coexist in the same space. [. . .]

In the wake of the exhibition’s termination, Tancons sent a letter to the French Ministry of Culture sharply rebuking the seeming hypocrisy of the museum’s decision. “This brutal and shocking cancellation, which comes at a time when Paris Noir is triumphing in Paris at the Centre Pompidou, calls into question the double discourse regarding the artistic productions of Afro-descendant and Caribbean artists and the difficulty curators from their territories have in promoting their stories,” the curator wrote in a June 10 letter to the agency, according to Le Monde. [. . .]

The letter asserts that in spite of the cancellation, Van Lévé will move forward at a different venue. Echoing this sentiment, Biabiany, one of the signatories, told Hyperallergic in an email she is “convinced that another institution abroad is ready to welcome Van Lévé.” She had planned to exhibit the bamboo video work “Toli Toli” (2018) and an installation consisting of ceramic, sugarcane leaves and sound that will be shown at the São Paulo Biennale later this year. [. . .]

For full article, see https://hyperallergic.com/1027677/artists-decry-centre-pompidous-cancellation-of-caribbean-art-exhibition/

Also read Le Monde’s “Une exposition sur la scène artistique des Caraïbes annulée au Centre Pompidou-Metz” at https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2025/06/20/une-exposition-sur-la-scene-artistique-des-caraibes-annulee-au-centre-pompidou-metz_6614764_3246.html#selection-2989.338-2989.352

[Shown above, photo by Tim Ohler: Installation view of Minia Biabiany’s “toli toli” (2018) with video projection at the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art: We Don’t Need Another Hero.]