Funding an exhibition: the five doors and what each one asks for

A mid-sized exhibition in Algiers costs between 1.8 and 4.5 million dinars before acquisitions. No single door covers that amount, and the five do not run on the same calendar.

The public grant is the slowest and the cheapest in paperwork. It requires a programme fixed nine to twelve months ahead, which rules out projects born of current events.

Corporate sponsorship is faster and costs more in relationship time. What it asks for is not visibility in return, contrary to the usual belief, but a guarantee that the date will hold.

Foreign cultural institutes will readily fund an artist or a production, and rarely overheads. Their review is short, two to three months, and their reporting requirement is the heaviest of the five.

Ticketing does not fund an exhibition. It recovers part of it, and it arrives after the spending. A programme counting on it to balance pays its suppliers late. Co-production remains the only door that shares the risk instead of moving it.