It was just ten years ago on December 4, 2012, François Hollande then President of the Republic inaugurated in the city of Lens, in the north of France, a museum like no other, Le Louvre-Lens, little brother of the largest museum in France.
Built in the heart of the former mining basin, this relocated Louvre aimed to become a popular meeting place in this underprivileged region. Ten years later, the bet has paid off since the museum welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors every year and above all, it has contributed to the economic development of this region which was very affected by the closure of the mines some thirty years ago. .
“The unemployment figure has gone up since 2012, since the opening of the museum, from around 16% in the territory to around 10% today, explains Marie Lavandie, the director of the Louvre Lens since 2016, at the microphone of Edmond Sadaka from the Culture department. So (there is) a decline in unemployment that is really almost unparalleled.
The territory is in the process of redeveloping a lot economically, including reindustrialisation. After the closure of the mines, twenty or thirty years ago, there are many jobs on the territory which are offered to the inhabitants, and not only. Because the mines, by closing, not only eliminated employment, they also hollowed out in a way the territory that had been drawn for them, around them.
And moreover, the Louvre Lens is part of this return of a new meaning, of these mining wastelands since it is itself installed on a former mine head, shaft number 9 in Lens, which employed a thousand people who were going to dig the coal seam a kilometer from our feet”.
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During the inauguration of the Louvre-Lens in December 2012, Jean-Luc Martinez and Vincent Pomarède, the two chief curators, explain the Galerie du temps at the Louvre-Lens.
Ten years later, has the bet been met? What relationship do the people of Lens have with this museum?
“The transplant with the population, it takes, yes. In the entourage of the Louvre Lens museum, lived, still lives a population that does not quite correspond to the public that we usually reach in museums. That was indeed the full extent of the bet.
It was really the museum’s priority to work with proximity to fulfill that part of the contract. We have 550,000 visitors, well, this year we will have 550,000 visitors per year.
Already, the public since confinement has returned. This is not the case everywhere. And then, the public is indeed very singularly local: 70% public from the region, plus 20% public from the agglomeration. A quarter of our public and the most local who have already come five times on average in ten years. Yes, things have taken hold and above all, a feeling of pride which is developing in the territory on the one hand and a certain number of markers today of a transformation, obviously long, that’s normal, but of a transformation well engaged in the territory”.
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