The Louvre-Lens is the world-renowned museum's first foray beyond its palatial Parisian home, and its most daring project since the glass pyramid that was added to the museum's courtyard in 1989. "Combining Louvre and Lens is like an explosion," Louvre president Henri Loyrette told reporters during a visit of the museum Monday. "We're on completely new territory here."
For Daniel Percheron, president of a region that has been scarred by fighting in two world wars and the later collapse of the coalmining industry, the fusion of the Louvre and Lens will release an energy "born of despair." "One museum doesn't make a spring ... but it does mean the winter is over," said the politician, whose enthusiasm swept Lens to victory over five other towns when the government began looking for a region with which to share the Louvre's collection.
From Egyptian sarcophagi and Etruscan bronzes to Renaissance masters and Romantics like France's Eugene Delacroix, the Louvre-Lens aims to bring high culture to the home of "les Ch'tis", as the locals are affectionately known because of their thick accents. Until now the town of 35,000 people, which is battling unemployment of around 16 per cent, invested its hopes in the local football team, RC Lens.
Percheron hopes that the arrival of the Louvre heralds an economic renaissance for the area, like the Guggenheim Museum achieved for the northern Spanish city of Bilbao. "We may be only a second-division football team but with the Louvre Lens we want to be in the first division of regions," he enthused. Compared with the Bilbao's famous Guggenheim museum, the Louvre-Lens - which was designed by Japanese agency Sanaa - is less spectacular. Deliberately so. The five low buildings that snake across the site, on a slight rise above the town, aim to integrate into the landscape, rather than dominate it.
The walls of brushed aluminium reflect two giant mine dumps, Europe's tallest, which rise on the horizon like pyramids, as well as the museum's park and Lens' big skies. Some of the buildings, including the central foyer and the restoration rooms, have walls of glass that add to the museum's open and transparent feel.
The theme of accessibility is carried over in the Grande Galerie which houses a collection of 205 works on loan from the Louvre, including Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix, the painting that has become the symbol of the museum, which depicts a bare-breasted woman leading the French in revolt. The works, which span five millenia, are mixed across civilisations and cultures in an exhibition that will that takes visitors on a walk through time, rather than through various art schools or movements.
"We put together works that speak to each other, across cultures," curator Jean-Luc Martinez explained. Thus, the portrait of a 19th century Iranian Shah sitting proudly on his throne is displayed alongside that of a 19th century French newspaper owner, Louis-Francois Bertin, who was instrumental in fomenting the 1830 revolution commemorated in the Delacroix painting.
In another difference with the Paris Louvre, the art has come off the walls and is hung on rails or plinths, so that visitors can get closer to and circumnavigate. The museum, which cost 150 million euros, aims to attract 500,000 visitors a year, both from within the region and from nearby cities including Paris, which is an hour away by train, and countries such as Belgium.
An encouraging precedent has been set in the eastern city of Metz, where a offshoot of the Centre Pompidou modern art museum has received 1.6 million visitors since it opened in 2010. Excitement is mounting in Lens ahead of the official December 12 opening. Residents will be given a sneak preview on Tuesday, along with free chips and a fireworks display in the football stadium.
For Francis Debethune, a 55-year-old bus company supervisor, who played as a boy sliding down the backfill from the mine, the museum is both a tribute to the past and the harbinger of a brighter future. Debethune's father-in-law, a Polish immigrant, and his uncle, both died of silicosis, a respiratory disease caused by inhaling mine dust. "This museum is an honour for them," he said, standing in the rain watching earthmovers at work on the gardens on Monday. "Our region has been blackened by the past. It's time now to move forward."