The new museum invites visitors on a veritable voyage of discovery through contemporary, modern and outsider art.
What is outsider art? A concept conceived by the painter Jean Dubuffet that describes works created by artists that have no “real” artistic training.
Force, power, energy, essence, originality—a plethora of terms could be used to define outsider art and LaM’s collection. Donations from the Masurels, a large family of industrialists from the north of France, and Aracine, an association of artists and collectors headed by Madeleine Lommel, have resulted in an excellent representation of this art form.

Contemporary and modern art is represented by the works of major artists: Calder, Picasso and Dodeigne for sculptures in the garden, Braque, Modigliani, Léger, Derain and Cueto for paintings…

The Dominique Bozo Library will soon be expanded and will include a research center. The museum also features an auditorium and a café-restaurant.

A specialist in contemporary art, Sophy Lévy is the museum’s new director and conservator, having taken the helm on July 1, 2009. She aims to give the institution an international dimension by presenting a collection of outsider, contemporary, and modern art that is unique in France and northern Europe.

The Nord as a cultural destination

A certain film has most probably already introduced you to some aspects of the culture to be encountered in the Nord, so why not go one step further and explore a side of our lovely region that is rather less well-known but nonetheless worthy of interest, namely its museums?
And since good things never come just on their own, there are several such impressive museums, unique in their particular genre and just waiting for you to visit them. The one in Cassel, called the Hôtel de la Noble-Cour, is a wonderful setting for the collections of the departmentally-owned Museum of Flanders. Another, the Museum of Modern Art in Villeneuve d’Ascq, will reopen to the public on the 25th of September 2010 under a new name, the LaM, the Greater Lille Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Art Brut.
Add to that the change in identity of a third museum: the Tourcoing Fine-Arts Museum, which is to become the Muba Eugène Leroy, and Bob’s your uncle... or is it? Because it would after all be a mistake not to mention the wealth and diversity of the flourishing museums in the Nord and the promising diary of events to look forward to.
One thing is sure: the new season beginning in September will be offering a feast of culture for all!

The museum in Villeneuve d’Ascq seems to have a soul all of its own. Set in vast grounds, its buildings are on a human scale which immediately makes visitors feel at home. After more than four years of building work and refurbishment, the Greater Lille Museum of Modern Art will reopen to the public on the 25th of September 2010 under its new name, the LaM, Greater Lille Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Art Brut. Extended and modernised, it will be the first museum in France and the whole of northern Europe to feature simultaneously the principal elements of XXth and XXIst century art.
As lovely from the outside as inside...

The museum’s two beautiful buildings, surrounded by a sculpture park containing works by Alexandre Calder, Pablo Picasso, Eugène Dodeigne and others, will house three prestigious collections of works from the XXth and XXIst centuries, including a unique ensemble of art brut. The new layout of the museum provides for vast galleries for temporary exhibitions, enabling it to continue to stage major exhibitions of modern and contemporary art and art brut. In total: over 4,500 works (some them never before on display to the general public), 4,000 m2 of exhibition area (not counting the extended and restructured Dominique Bozo Library and its research centre), as well as an auditorium, a café–restaurant and other facilities. An impressive collection...

The museum is home to a collection of modern art of international importance donated to the Greater Lille authorities in 1979 by the Masurel family, a family of leading industrialists in the Nord, Expanded over the years, this now includes works by Georges Braque, Germán Cueto, André Derain, Henri Laurens, Fernand Léger, Amadeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault and others.

In 1999, the museum acquired France’s largest and most important collection of art brut, donated by Aracine, an association of artists and collectors of art brut headed by Madeleine Lommel. Consisting of over 4000 works, it will be one of the permanent exhibitions when the museum reopens.

A new face...

It is not merely the buildings and their collections that have been changing at the LAM. Sophie Lévy, the new director and conservator, took up her post on the 1st of July 2009. intent on giving the museum a new dimension and scope when it is reopened. As a specialist in modern art, she has seized the opportunity offered by the refurbishment of the museum to open it up to the international art scene, taking advantage of its exceptional geographical situation at the heart of Europe.

On its reopening, the museum will be the only museum in Europe offering the public access to a prestigious collection of modern art, a leading ensemble of contemporary art and an art brut collection unequalled in France.
The inaugural exhibition, entitled “Habiter poétiquement le monde”, is an auspicious indication of what lies ahead for the museum.
 

Official site of LaM in Lille
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