The
Louvre-Lens is a planned branch museum of the Musée du Louvre, due to open in 2012 in the industrial
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
city of
LensLens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...
,
Pas-de-CalaisPas-de-Calais is a department in northern France. Its name is the French equivalent of the Strait of Dover, which it borders.-History:Inhabited since prehistoric times, the Pas-de-Calais region was populated in turn by the Celtic Belgae, the Romans, the Germanic Franks and the Alemanni...
.
Since many of the works in the
LouvreThe Musée du Louvre or officially the Grand Louvre — in English, the Louvre Museum or Great Louvre, or simply the Louvre — is the largest national museum of France, the most visited museum in the world, and a historic monument. It is a central landmark of Paris, located on the Right Bank of the...
are viewed only in distinct departments—for example, French Painting, Near Eastern Art or Sculpture—established some 200 years ago, it was decided that a satellite building would be created outside of Paris, to experiment with other museological displays and to allow for a larger visitorship outside the confines of the Paris Palace.
The
Louvre-Lens is a planned branch museum of the Musée du Louvre, due to open in 2012 in the industrial
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
city of
LensLens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...
,
Pas-de-CalaisPas-de-Calais is a department in northern France. Its name is the French equivalent of the Strait of Dover, which it borders.-History:Inhabited since prehistoric times, the Pas-de-Calais region was populated in turn by the Celtic Belgae, the Romans, the Germanic Franks and the Alemanni...
.
Origin
Since many of the works in the
LouvreThe Musée du Louvre or officially the Grand Louvre — in English, the Louvre Museum or Great Louvre, or simply the Louvre — is the largest national museum of France, the most visited museum in the world, and a historic monument. It is a central landmark of Paris, located on the Right Bank of the...
are viewed only in distinct departments—for example, French Painting, Near Eastern Art or Sculpture—established some 200 years ago, it was decided that a satellite building would be created outside of Paris, to experiment with other museological displays and to allow for a larger visitorship outside the confines of the Paris Palace. Sourced from the Louvre's core holdings, and not from long-lost or stored works in the basement of the Louvre, as widely thought, the new satellite will show works side-by-side, cross-referenced and juxtaposed from all periods and cultures, creating an entirely new experience for the museum visitor. The project completion is planned for 2012; the building will be capable of receiving between 500 and 600 major works, with a core gallery over several millennia. This new building should receive about 500,000 visitors per year. There were originally six city candidates for this project:
AmiensAmiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardie.-History:The Paleolithic culture named Acheulean was named for its first identified site, in Saint-Acheul, a suburb of Amiens...
,
ArrasArras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
,
Boulogne-sur-MerBoulogne-sur-Mer is a city in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department of Pas-de-Calais. The population of the city was 44,859 in the 1999 census, whereas that of the whole metropolitan area was 135,116.-Name:...
,
CalaisCalais is a town in northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture...
,
LensLens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...
, and
ValenciennesValenciennes is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.It lies on the Scheldt river. Although the city and region had seen a steady decline between 1975 and 1990, it has since rebounded...
. On November 29, 2004, French Prime Minister
Jean-Pierre RaffarinJean-Pierre Raffarin is a French conservative politician and senator for Vienne.Jean-Pierre Raffarin served as the Prime Minister of France from 6 May 2002 to 31 May 2005, resigning after France's rejection of the referendum on the European Union draft constitution...
chose
Lens, Pas-de-CalaisLens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...
to be the site of the new Louvre building. Le Louvre-Lens was the name chosen for the museum.
Building
The new satellite museum, funded by the local regional government, the
Nord-Pas de CalaisNord-Pas-de-Calais is one of the 26 regions of France. It consists of the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais, in the north and has a border with Belgium. Until the end of the 20th century both the region and the department were called Nord...
, will have 28,000 square meters of usable space built on two levels, with semi-permanent exhibition space covering at least 6000 m². There will also be space set aside for rotating temporary exhibitions. The project will also feature a multi-purpose theatre and visitable conservation spaces. The building is comprised of a series of low-laying volumes clad in glass and stainless steel in the middle of a former mining site, largely reclaimed by nature. The estimated cost for this building is 82 million euro, or 103.4 million US dollars (at January 2009). The new satellite building was selected after an international architectural competition in 2005. The architectural joint-venture team of
SANAASANAA is an architectural firm that is based in Tokyo. It was founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.-Architecture by SANAA:* Multimedia Studio - 1995 to 1996 - Gifu, Japan...
(Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) of Tokyo, associated with Imrey-Culbert (New-York) and Catherine Mosbach (Paris), was awarded the project on September 26, 2005. SANAA is a widely recognized Japanese architectural firm, noted for their ethereal designs.
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