Laurent Le Bon, who was appointed president of the Centre Pompidou arts and culture center in Paris in 2021, having previously been one of its curators in the early 2000s, has never made a secret of his interest in comics. The Centre Pompidou is holding the "Comics on Every Floor" exhibition, which began on Wednesday, May 29.

Summer is a great time for innovative programming. We thought that offering comics events would resonate with the Olympic Games, insofar as young people could enjoy them, even if the medium speaks to everyone. We wanted to show its diversity through a panorama that has, in the end, turned out to be quite a large project. All the components of the Centre Pompidou have contributed, even the IRCAM [Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music], with a concert paired with drawings. This proposal should also be seen as a nod to the new cultural project that will be implemented in 2030, after the renovation work, and which will offer a new vision of the Centre Pompidou through "every floor." And not just in the Forum, where comics had been relegated, when I had wanted to defend them as a curator.

Proposing an exhibition on Hergé was a real struggle: I really thought I was taking an oral exam for an art history degree, along the lines of "Are comics art?" The support of the president at the time, Bruno Racine, who is a great Tintinophile, was decisive.

On the acquisition policy for artworks. My curatorial colleagues were not in favor of opening up a new field of acquisition. On the contrary, I thought that, rather than buying an additional Matisse, it would have been more appropriate to invest in fields that had not yet been ploughed. On a side note, this "Hergé" exhibition does not appear, today, in our ranking of the most visited temporary exhibitions. It had been overlooked, on the pretext that it was free. Yet it was perhaps one of the Centre's greatest successes...

No. When I proposed this event, I sensed interest both from the Public Library of Information (BPI), which is a key player in the Centre Pompidou for comics, as well as from the culture and creation department. At my request, the museum followed suit. Everyone is enthusiastic. Our pseudo-speciality, which is to show originals, is reinforced by the magic of the treasures on display. People will be blown away. Comics have such diversity, such abundance.

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