The director of the Musée Picasso has defended her decision to organise an international touring exhibition to raise money for the renovation of the Paris museum. Anne Baldessari, the museum's director, told Le Monde that producing exhibitions abroad was their only resource, adding that the money received helps to finance conservation and exhibitions.
Baldessari revealed that the museum raised between €1m and €3.5m a year from the touring exhibition Masterpieces from the Picasso Museum. So far the exhibition venture has returned €16m.
The criticisms of the museum follow comments made by the General Association of Curators of French Public Collections expressing concern about cuts in state funding for French museums and the "extreme free-market logic" increasingly adopted by national museums, a barb directed at the Musée Picasso.
