Now well anchored in the local landscape, the museum must still prove that it can contribute to the economic development of a disaster area.
by Alexandre Lenoir (Lille, correspondent)
The Louvre-Lens is 10 years old. Its growth is not over, but its designers can congratulate itself on one thing: no one calls into question the merits of a museum that has attracted more than 4.5 million people to date. 70 % from the Hauts-de-France region. The opposite of the Parisian Louvre, which attracts 80 % of foreign tourists.
For the inhabitants of the mining basin, the long aluminum vessel placed on the old terril (flattened, let us specify it) of the pit 9 is now part of the landscape. In the same way as the Bollaert stadium, a temple of regional football, located within 400 meters.
A reason for pride for Marie Lavandier, director of the Louvre-Lens since 2016: “We are not saying to people” come with us “. It is we who are not from here. So, we start by going Present yourself… Modestly. “Speaking workshops for young unemployed people, cultural activity stand at the neighboring shopping center of Noyelles-Godault (Pas-de-Calais), partnership with the School of Second Chance, with the prison From Château-Thierry (Aisne) … With a battalion of thirty mediators, the museum multiplies seduction operations towards a local population usually far from museums.
Like this special weekend, Saturday December 3 and Sunday 4 December, which marks the tenth anniversary. “There is no division between learned culture and popular culture,” said Marie Lavandier. This is evidenced by these exhibitions, both demanding and general public, such as love in 2018, Poland 1840-1918. Painting the soul of a nation in 2020 or that on Champollion, currently in progress.
According to a declarative survey carried out by the museum in 2021, 23 % of visitors are employed or workers. Ten points more than the average of museums in France.
“Bilbao effect”
After a first year 2013 “honeymoon” (one million visitors) followed by three disappointing years, the annual crowd stabilized around 450,000 people. Admittedly, thanks to the quality of temporary exhibitions, valued by the works loaned by the Louvre. But also due to free access to the Time Gallery, this huge exhibition hall, in which visitors explore major works under a chronological order under a glass ceiling – Mesopotamian shelves carved with cuneiform writing to large European canvases of the XIX e century.
Without this gratuitousness, a quarter of visitors concedes that they would never have crossed the doors of the museum, still according to the declarative survey of 2021. This militant gesture has a cost: the 15 million euros required for operation of the museum is 83 % provided by local communities, region in mind.
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