The northern mining town of Lens is home to more than 500,000 people and is best known for its first-division football team, its pit closures and its destruction by bombs in the second world war.
Most tourists, if they stray beyond the more culturally well-endowed towns of Arras and Lille, only visit the area for solemn trips to the first world war trenches and the nearby Canadian war memorial at Vimy Ridge.
But in four years' time, as part of a scheme to regionalise the holdings of the vast Louvre museum, a 16 sq km former mineshaft in Lens will be filled with a spanking new building housing a rotating selection of 600 works from the Paris museum.
'The whole collection will come here, except for the Mona Lisa,' says the mayor of Lens, Guy Delcourt. The project was developed after a visit from Henri Loyrette, the president and director of the Louvre, who announced his desire to open a northern satellite of the Parisian mothership.
The €100m price tag is being met by the wider region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the European Union, Lens and other local authorities: it is estimated that the running cost will be €10m per annum.
Opening an 'antenna' of the Louvre here, Delcourt explains, is part of a plan to add a fresh spark to the northern tourist trail. The mineshaft location is meant to be symbolic, he says: 'The mines contributed hugely to the life of the country. It's a recognition by the country of the coalmining population.'
The Louvre is equally gushing about the project. 'The choice of the site of Lens represents an opportunity to redefine the place of culture - a source of development and pride - in a region strongly marked by an industrial and social crisis,' says Loyrette.
'It is a challenge for the Louvre, which must renew its relations with the public and its methods of receiving them. Educational experimentation will take an important place in the outpost, which will be a true place of cultural democratisation.'
The winning architect's bid to build the museum will be announced in September. Details are sketchy, but a state-of-the-art piece of contemporary architecture is promised. When it opens in early 2009, it will directly create 300 jobs and, the mayor hopes, attract more business to the town.
The choice of Lens took into account its position near major motorways linking it with Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany and its closeness to Britain via Calais (an hour's drive away), as well as the international rail connections - it is one hour by TGV from the Gare du Nord in Paris.
'We thought we were best placed to cover the whole area of north Europe,' says Delcourt, who estimates the new museum's international catchment at 21 million potential visitors - of whom, he adds earnestly, '7 million will be young people'.
Social agendas aside, the unveiling of the project comes during changing times for the Louvre. A review of its admission fee last year saw it raised by one euro to €8.50 for adults, although under-18s can still enter for free.
It has given the go-ahead for Ron Howard to film The Da Vinci Code in its grounds, and announced a partnership with Atlanta's High Museum of Art, which from the end of 2006 will receive loans from the Louvre's collection for three- to ten-month exhibitions.
'The [Atlanta] project will favour a spread of the Louvre's international influence and cultural exchanges with the United States,' Loyrette says. The support this will generate from the American museum, he adds, will also help fund renovations of some of the Louvre's own galleries.
Despite a warm reception in the press, the Lens antenna has been ruthlessly criticised by some art specialists who believe that it is not a museum's job to help with social regeneration.
Didier Rykner, an art historian and founding editor of the fine art website La Tribune de l'Art, describes the Lens and Atlanta projects respectively as politically and financially motivated.
He complains that no such investment is made in other regional museums struggling with severely limited space, such as the fine art museums of Bordeaux and Blois, or those that have closed, such as the Musée Vera in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Also, he complains, many works will no longer be immediately available to the millions of international tourists that get off the plane in Paris from places other than northern Europe, unless they fancy a trip to Lens.
'From the 19th century to the present, the Louvre has placed thousands of works in regional museums,' Rykner says. 'These are the real antennae of the Louvre. Even so, the regional museums' collections are often badly displayed because of space and resources.'
He cites numerous paintings in museums all over France, from Strasbourg to Marseille, that have been on long-term transfers from the Louvre. Many of the items are not on display and in some cases the loans date from the 1850s.
'The very idea of creating antennae is unjustified,' Rykner says. Far from being a cultural desert, he argues, Lens is a quarter of an hour from Arras, whose fine art museum holds a number of 17th-century tableaux given to it by the Louvre, several of them currently in the vault.
Also, 45 minutes away is Lille's flourishing fine art museum (about the same size as the site of the new Louvre), which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to its Rubens show last year.
Finally, Rykner complains that the transportation of artworks to these annexes will endanger the works themselves.
A heritage curator from a museum near Lyon, who asked not to be named because of the strict code of practice binding French curators, says: 'In Lens, the state is entrusting national collections to make a false annexe of the Louvre, since the whole thing is financed by the local authorities who at the same time aren't facing up to the needs of existing museums - some of which are very old, like the Arras museum.
'The publicity benefits the big museums, which are already very well known, to the detriment of development aid to regional museums.
'There is no need to create big brands like the Guggenheim or the Louvre in order to make a link between underprivileged populations and cultural activity. It's a strong bet that the greater part of the visitors to Louvre II won't even be from Lens.'
For Delcourt, these complaints do not reflect the popular view. 'It's scandalous,' he says, referring to Rykner's criticisms. 'He gives the impression that culture is something just for Parisians.'
'The project is an extension of a pre-existing trend,' says Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, the chief art curator at the Louvre, who is in charge of developing the programme for what will be shown at the new museum.
'The Louvre has always been a very generous lender and the number of objects it lends is growing. Lens is a town with very, very little in the way of museums. The dynamic presence of the museum in the region will mean the Lens Louvre is not an isolated project, but will revitalise the institutions that exist there already.'
Taburet-Delahaye says her job is to make the new museum as widely accessible as possible, which means a heavy emphasis on education, conferences and workshops. The trend towards regionalisation of the collections, she says, coincides with the publicly owned Louvre coming under pressure from the state to become more self-sufficient.
It is not the first time a French national museum has branched out in this way: last December the winning architects' designs were chosen for a branch of the National Centre of Art and Culture, which is based in Paris's Pompidou Centre. Its new outpost in the north-eastern town of Metz will open in 2007.
The Pompidou has also put itself in the running against organisations such as the Guggenheim and New York's Museum of Modern Art to win the right to operate one of the museums in the giant West Kowloon Cultural District being developed in Hong Kong.
Delcourt says he was influenced by the success of other cultural regeneration projects and went to Manchester in April to visit, among other things, the Lowry Centre.
Manchester also has an outpost of the Imperial War Museum housed in a landmark contemporary building. 'We don't plan to copy Manchester, but it is an inspiration for Lens,' Delcourt says.
Roland Lloyd Parry is a freelance writer
Most tourists, if they stray beyond the more culturally well-endowed towns of Arras and Lille, only visit the area for solemn trips to the first world war trenches and the nearby Canadian war memorial at Vimy Ridge.
But in four years' time, as part of a scheme to regionalise the holdings of the vast Louvre museum, a 16 sq km former mineshaft in Lens will be filled with a spanking new building housing a rotating selection of 600 works from the Paris museum.
'The whole collection will come here, except for the Mona Lisa,' says the mayor of Lens, Guy Delcourt. The project was developed after a visit from Henri Loyrette, the president and director of the Louvre, who announced his desire to open a northern satellite of the Parisian mothership.
The €100m price tag is being met by the wider region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the European Union, Lens and other local authorities: it is estimated that the running cost will be €10m per annum.
Opening an 'antenna' of the Louvre here, Delcourt explains, is part of a plan to add a fresh spark to the northern tourist trail. The mineshaft location is meant to be symbolic, he says: 'The mines contributed hugely to the life of the country. It's a recognition by the country of the coalmining population.'
The Louvre is equally gushing about the project. 'The choice of the site of Lens represents an opportunity to redefine the place of culture - a source of development and pride - in a region strongly marked by an industrial and social crisis,' says Loyrette.
'It is a challenge for the Louvre, which must renew its relations with the public and its methods of receiving them. Educational experimentation will take an important place in the outpost, which will be a true place of cultural democratisation.'
The winning architect's bid to build the museum will be announced in September. Details are sketchy, but a state-of-the-art piece of contemporary architecture is promised. When it opens in early 2009, it will directly create 300 jobs and, the mayor hopes, attract more business to the town.
The choice of Lens took into account its position near major motorways linking it with Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany and its closeness to Britain via Calais (an hour's drive away), as well as the international rail connections - it is one hour by TGV from the Gare du Nord in Paris.
'We thought we were best placed to cover the whole area of north Europe,' says Delcourt, who estimates the new museum's international catchment at 21 million potential visitors - of whom, he adds earnestly, '7 million will be young people'.
Social agendas aside, the unveiling of the project comes during changing times for the Louvre. A review of its admission fee last year saw it raised by one euro to €8.50 for adults, although under-18s can still enter for free.
It has given the go-ahead for Ron Howard to film The Da Vinci Code in its grounds, and announced a partnership with Atlanta's High Museum of Art, which from the end of 2006 will receive loans from the Louvre's collection for three- to ten-month exhibitions.
'The [Atlanta] project will favour a spread of the Louvre's international influence and cultural exchanges with the United States,' Loyrette says. The support this will generate from the American museum, he adds, will also help fund renovations of some of the Louvre's own galleries.
Despite a warm reception in the press, the Lens antenna has been ruthlessly criticised by some art specialists who believe that it is not a museum's job to help with social regeneration.
Didier Rykner, an art historian and founding editor of the fine art website La Tribune de l'Art, describes the Lens and Atlanta projects respectively as politically and financially motivated.
He complains that no such investment is made in other regional museums struggling with severely limited space, such as the fine art museums of Bordeaux and Blois, or those that have closed, such as the Musée Vera in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Also, he complains, many works will no longer be immediately available to the millions of international tourists that get off the plane in Paris from places other than northern Europe, unless they fancy a trip to Lens.
'From the 19th century to the present, the Louvre has placed thousands of works in regional museums,' Rykner says. 'These are the real antennae of the Louvre. Even so, the regional museums' collections are often badly displayed because of space and resources.'
He cites numerous paintings in museums all over France, from Strasbourg to Marseille, that have been on long-term transfers from the Louvre. Many of the items are not on display and in some cases the loans date from the 1850s.
'The very idea of creating antennae is unjustified,' Rykner says. Far from being a cultural desert, he argues, Lens is a quarter of an hour from Arras, whose fine art museum holds a number of 17th-century tableaux given to it by the Louvre, several of them currently in the vault.
Also, 45 minutes away is Lille's flourishing fine art museum (about the same size as the site of the new Louvre), which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to its Rubens show last year.
Finally, Rykner complains that the transportation of artworks to these annexes will endanger the works themselves.
A heritage curator from a museum near Lyon, who asked not to be named because of the strict code of practice binding French curators, says: 'In Lens, the state is entrusting national collections to make a false annexe of the Louvre, since the whole thing is financed by the local authorities who at the same time aren't facing up to the needs of existing museums - some of which are very old, like the Arras museum.
'The publicity benefits the big museums, which are already very well known, to the detriment of development aid to regional museums.
'There is no need to create big brands like the Guggenheim or the Louvre in order to make a link between underprivileged populations and cultural activity. It's a strong bet that the greater part of the visitors to Louvre II won't even be from Lens.'
For Delcourt, these complaints do not reflect the popular view. 'It's scandalous,' he says, referring to Rykner's criticisms. 'He gives the impression that culture is something just for Parisians.'
'The project is an extension of a pre-existing trend,' says Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, the chief art curator at the Louvre, who is in charge of developing the programme for what will be shown at the new museum.
'The Louvre has always been a very generous lender and the number of objects it lends is growing. Lens is a town with very, very little in the way of museums. The dynamic presence of the museum in the region will mean the Lens Louvre is not an isolated project, but will revitalise the institutions that exist there already.'
Taburet-Delahaye says her job is to make the new museum as widely accessible as possible, which means a heavy emphasis on education, conferences and workshops. The trend towards regionalisation of the collections, she says, coincides with the publicly owned Louvre coming under pressure from the state to become more self-sufficient.
It is not the first time a French national museum has branched out in this way: last December the winning architects' designs were chosen for a branch of the National Centre of Art and Culture, which is based in Paris's Pompidou Centre. Its new outpost in the north-eastern town of Metz will open in 2007.
The Pompidou has also put itself in the running against organisations such as the Guggenheim and New York's Museum of Modern Art to win the right to operate one of the museums in the giant West Kowloon Cultural District being developed in Hong Kong.
Delcourt says he was influenced by the success of other cultural regeneration projects and went to Manchester in April to visit, among other things, the Lowry Centre.
Manchester also has an outpost of the Imperial War Museum housed in a landmark contemporary building. 'We don't plan to copy Manchester, but it is an inspiration for Lens,' Delcourt says.
Roland Lloyd Parry is a freelance writer
