The Louvre-Lens in 10 years. Its growth is not over, but its designers can take pride in one thing: no one questions the merits of a museum that has so far attracted more than 4.5 million people. 70% from the Hauts-de-France region. Quite 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 slag heap (flattened, let us specify) of pit 9 is now part of the landscape. As well as the Bollaert stadium, temple of regional football, located less than 400 meters away.
A source of pride for Marie Lavandier, director of the Louvre-Lens since 2016: “We don’t tell people ‘come to our house’. It is we who are not from here. So, we start by going to introduce ourselves… modestly. » Public speaking workshops for young unemployed people, cultural activity stand at the nearby Noyelles-Godault shopping center (Pas-de-Calais), partnership with the second chance school, with the Château-Thierry prison (Aisne )… With a battalion of thirty mediators, the museum multiplies the operations of seduction towards a local population usually far from museums.
Like this special weekend, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 December, which marks the tenth anniversary. “There is no division between scholarly culture and popular culture”, says Marie Lavandier again. Evidenced by these exhibitions, both demanding and open to the public, such asAmour in 2018, Poland 1840-1918. Painting the soul of a nation in 2020 or the one on Champollioncurrently in progress.
According to a declarative survey conducted by the museum in 2021, 23% of visitors are employees or workers. Ten points more than the average for museums in France.
“Bilbao Effect”
After a first “honeymoon” year in 2013 (one million visitors) followed by three disappointing years, annual attendance stabilized at around 450,000 people. Certainly, thanks to the quality of the temporary exhibitions, enhanced by the works on loan from the Louvre. But also because of the free access to the time gallerythis huge exhibition hall, in which visitors explore under a glass ceiling major works in chronological order – from Mesopotamian tablets carved with cuneiform writing to large European canvases of the 19the century.
Without this free admission, a quarter of visitors concede that they would never have passed through the doors of the museum, again according to the 2021 declarative survey. This militant gesture has a cost: the 15 million euros necessary for the operation of the museum are 83% provided by local authorities, region in the lead.
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