Bruno Decharme: A Collector Promoting Art Brut

In 2021, you made a remarkable donation to the Centre Pompidou of 921 works by 242 artists from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Can you tell us about this initiative? The initial idea was to give this collection to the Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval , although we made a lot of progress in this direction, it proved impossible. I had also thought of creating a foundation but didn’t have the means to make that happen. Then I had this meeting with the Centre Pompidou, thanks to Antoine de Galbert. Bernard Blistène, the then director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the donation was accepted immediately, no questions asked, and in three months it was a done deal! At first, perhaps he thought I would donate 100 to 150 works, but I explained that it was important for the museum to have a large corpus, in both historical and geographical terms, so that some serious work could be carried out. I just asked for one room to be dedicated to Art Brut. The display changes every six months. A major exhibition featuring the donation is being planned, but it is difficult to set a date right now because of the work being carried out at the Centre Pompidou. In any event, the entire…