Louvre-Lens

The Louvre-Lens is a new museum due to open in 2010 in the industrial French city of Lens, Pas-de-Calais.

Origin

Since many of the works in the Louvre 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 late 2010; the building will be capable of receiving between 500 and 600 major works, with a core gallery dedicated to the human figure over several millennia. This new building should receive about 500,000 visitors per year. There were originally six city candidates for this project: Amiens, Arras, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Calais, Lens, and Valenciennes. On November 29, 2004, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin chose Lens, Pas-de-Calais 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 Calais, will have 22,000 square meters of usable space built on two levels, with semi-permanent exhibition space covering at least 5000 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 60 acres former mining site, largely reclaimed by nature. The estimated cost for this building is 70 million euro, or 96.6 million US dollars (at July 2007). The new satellite building was selected after an international architectural competition in 2005. The architectural joint-venture team of SANAA of Tokyo and the New York-based IMREY CULBERT LP were awarded the project on September 26, 2005. [http://www.sanaa.co.jp/ SANAA] , Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa with Tim Culbert and Celia Imrey / IMREY CULBERT LP [http://www.imreyculbert.com/] ). SANAA is a widely recognized Japanese architectural firm, noted for their ethereal designs. IMREY CULBERT is a US/French architectural firm, specializing in museum and exhibit designs, with offices in New York and Paris. Tim Culbert, project architect that lead the team's submission for the Louvre-Lens project, was previously an associate-partner of I. M. Pei, architect of the Pyramid of the Louvre.

ee also

* Musée du Louvre
* Palais du Louvre
* Louvre Abu Dhabi

External links

* [http://www.louvrelens.fr/en/ Official website]
* [http://www.specifier.com.au/projects/museums/31569/Art-On-The-March-The-Louvre-Lens-and-The-Pompidou-Metz.html Images and profile at "Specifier Magazine"]