France's 23 regional contemporary art centers, known as Frac (Fonds régionaux d'art contemporain), are grappling with a mounting storage crisis as their reserves reach capacity while acquisitions continue to grow at an unprecedented rate. A recent investigation by Le Journal des Arts has highlighted this critical issue affecting the majority of these institutions, whose combined collections now comprise more than 50,000 artworks, making them France's third-largest contemporary art collection.
The Frac network, established in the 1980s as part of France's major cultural decentralization policy, was designed to make contemporary art accessible across all regions. "I want to emphasize that the Fracs were created in the 1980s following a major decentralization policy aimed at making culture accessible in the regions," explains Fabien Danesi, director of Frac Corsica and president of the Regional Contemporary Art Funds Network. "The Fracs' main mission is to build a contemporary art collection with the goal of supporting current creation. Another fundamental challenge is to accompany artworks through mediation activities. We're really working within a logic of raising awareness about creation, and the Fracs are actually tools for cultural democratization in the regions."
The storage problem has become increasingly acute as collections expand by 2 to 3 percent annually due to ongoing acquisitions, which form a core part of each Frac's mission. While some institutions like those in Île-de-France and Corsica have managed to construct additional buildings in recent years to better handle conservation and storage needs, the majority face problematic overcrowding. Lauriane Gricourt, director of Les Abattoirs (Frac Occitanie), describes the recurring challenge: "The reserves are the heart of our institutions since one of our primary missions is to preserve and disseminate these collections. It's true that about every ten years, we find ourselves confronted with these issues of congestion and reserve saturation, and we always have to find solutions to optimize storage arrangements and rent external storage spaces."
Each Frac maintains its own collection and must store thousands of artworks in its reserves while maintaining space for future acquisitions. The diversity of artworks in terms of dimensions, media, and formats compounds the storage challenge. "Since each year the Fracs continue to acquire works of different dimensions, media, and formats, at some point we find ourselves confronted with storage problems," Gricourt adds.
To address these constraints, the Fracs have developed several strategies to keep their collections active and visible. Approximately 14 percent of their holdings—around 6,600 artworks—are currently on loan or deposit at other institutions, ensuring collection visibility while benefiting surrounding territories. Many Fracs also organize exhibitions featuring works from their own collections to showcase their acquisitions and provide public access to pieces that might otherwise remain in storage.
Regular reorganization of storage spaces and optimization of acquisition policies represent additional solutions for improving storage efficiency and limiting overcrowding. However, these measures require careful balance to maintain the institutions' core mission. "We try first to find solutions that don't impact our acquisition policies, because impacting our acquisition policies means impacting support for creation," Gricourt explains. "So we try to optimize our storage through new furniture or new arrangements. But we're faced with having to rethink our acquisition policy, and we're implementing what we call a predictive conservation protocol—that is, beyond the relevance of the work in relation to our acquisition policy, we're going to take into account other criteria, specifically those of storage, material conservation, and artwork dimensions."
This predictive conservation approach represents a significant shift in how these institutions operate, forcing them to consider practical storage implications alongside artistic and cultural value when making acquisition decisions. The challenge reflects broader issues facing cultural institutions worldwide as they balance their mission to collect and preserve contemporary art with the practical realities of physical space and resource limitations.
