They do things differently in France. It is not necessarily better, but it is certainly different. Whereas in Britain the cultural gap between the capital and the country’s regions has remained marked despite the cultural building boom of the past decade, in France, two organisations define that difference.
The Réunion des Musées Nationaux ensures wide distribution of important pieces of art to the regions. Established in 1895, today there are 35 national museums. The RMN is a public industrial and commercial establishment (EPIC) under the trusteeship of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, and its mission is to exhibit, publish, disseminate, promote, develop, and acquire work for the enhancement and better understanding of cultural heritage, by enabling everybody to discover it.
In its overarching strategic vision it is a very Gallic concept. It has constantly collected, managed and invested the funds needed to acquire works of art for its museums, and is one of the leading organisers of art exhibitions in the world among its many, wide-ranging and far-reaching cultural and educational interests.
In a further move to decentralise, in 1982 Jack Lang, the then minister responsible, initiated regional contemporary art funds, the FRAC or Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain. Present in every region, there are 23 of them. They have their own identities and since 2000 began to acquire exhibition spaces. Their collections amount to 26,000 works by 4,200 artists. Despite being run on a regional basis, this is France – hence there is some central control, but they all have very different acquisition budgets, exhibition and access policies.
And while a golden era for arts building has drawn to a close in the UK, in France it is beginning. The UK’s museum and galleries that have opened in the recent past in Margate, Wakefield, Glasgow, and Colchester were a last hurrah for a policy that was seen as key to regeneration of some of the least prosperous parts of the country for the past 15 years. In the wan hope that the ‘Bilbao effect’ might descend by artistic architectural osmosis, UK arts agencies sought to prove a regular ‘multiplier’ that ensured every pound invested on culture generated two for local economies.
Notable successes have been delivered from Salford to Gateshead, and Nottingham to Middlesbrough, interconnecting with tourism and travel to deliver that economic and social payback. But they were no defence to a central government that saw this discretionary economy as an easy target for cuts.
Across the Channel meanwhile, things are hotting up. In 2012 an extraordinary new €18.3m venue designed by ODBC, the Paris-based architectural partnership of Odile Decq and Benoît Cornette opened outside of Rennes, the new home of Frac Bretagne’s 4,700-piece collection of work by 543 artists. Frac Orléans, south of Paris, has more than 800 architectural models and will have a new building designed by Jakob+MacFarlane, while Frac Aquitaine in Bordeaux will have a building by the Danish-French single-project partnership BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) & FREAKS freearchitects. Frac Nord-Pas-de-Calais in Dunkirk will have a new home designed by Lacation & Vassal, and Kengo Kuma & Associates has designed buildings for both Frac Franche-Comté in Besançon, and Frac Paca, Marseille. They were all celebrated in an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2012.
The buildings will attract huge attention, as has been the case in Rennes, because once the collected works become more accessible and exhibited more widely, it will be clear to everyone what these organisations have been doing. But that is only part of the story. The buildings represent far more than just another exhibition space, promoting debate as to whether outreach works, whether modern and contemporary art has been at all demystified by the FRAC, an evaluation of their links to local communities, and consideration of their level of achievement in really bringing art to the people.
The jury is still out as to whether this raft of new buildings is any different to what happened in the UK and be something that began in part as a backlash against traditional museums but become merely additional regular public galleries in all but name?
Kengo Kuma’s new building for Frac Paca should make Marseille an important art destination when it opens this year. It will be in good company. Fearing that he might leave office without a monument to match those of his predecessors, president Nicolas Sarkozy backed a Museum of Mediterranean Civilisation, the MuCEM, also due to be opened in 2013 in Marseille when the city is European Capital of Culture.
Its concept matches that of the Chirac-championed anthropological Musée du Quai Branly in Paris: they both grapple with issues of globalisation and shifting social hierarchies. Branly has been a surprisingly popular triumph, MuCEM will doubtless replicate that success: its location alone at the entrance to the port will guarantee it is a tourist draw, with a collection of a million exhibits. Realised in partnership with the state, the City of Marseille, the départmental and regional councils, the MuCEM represents the first real relocation of a national museum to a major regional capital.
Facing the sea the MuCEM incorporates Fort Saint-Jean, a historical site spanning 15,000 sq m and a new 17,000 sq m building designed by Rudy Ricciotti. Both sites will be linked by a 115m-wide pedestrian bridge. It will offer an exceptional exhibition venue, an auditorium, meeting and conference rooms, shops, cafe and restaurant.
Between the Fort Saint-Jean and the cathedral La Major will be another new expo, the CeReM, designed by Stefano Boeri, with two main public areas – one under the sea and one in the air housing a permanent exhibition in which visitors will be able to ‘see and live the experience of the Mediterranean’.
The overall construction programme in Marseille is unprecedented, a series of regeneration projects within a competition-winning master plan by Michel Desvigne and Foster + Partners that reclaims the quaysides as public space, relocates traffic, and enhances a truly grand space. Jean Paul Viguier was responsible for the first in a new generation of buildings which undertake the renewal of this so-called Euroméditerranée district.
In the area between the docks and l’avenue de Dunkerque, the Coeur Mediterranée is a mixed-use hotel, office and commercial space that has a wrap-around skin pierced with a trapezoidal motif evoking the city’s maritime character.
Viguier, who once worked with BDG McColl on the Carré Sénart shopping centre outside Paris, has also been responsible for the huge landmark shopping and leisure centre in Lyon about to open, the Pôle de loisirs et de commerces, and is currently designing the new 130,000 sq m SFR headquarters at Saint-Denis.
Decq and Cornette, the couple responsible for Frac Bretagne, had previously designed the MACRO, in collaboration with Burkhard Morass. With Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI they are the Italian capital’s flagship contemporary art museums. Exhibits, which include works by all of Italy’s important post-war artists, are displayed in what was once a Peroni brewery, itself an important example of industrial design. The new museum retains much of the original structure but now sports a sexy steel-and- glass finish.
In comparison with the Hadid building, MACRO is a far smaller but efficient exhibition vehicle, enhanced by the quality of detail and the ability to establish itself in a difficult context. And it is a manifesto-project that links a contemporary art space to the urban context at the heart of the city, a non-traditional, labyrinthine inside-out experience of a place, all angles, and textures, with a roof terrace that brings new views of Rome, and a garden restaurant from which to enjoy them.
As with the earlier building in Rome, the Goth lady in black’s Breton space-age-sheen interiors feature a lot of very bright red within soaring asymmetrical black spaces. The new building in Rennes is an equally strong architectural statement, a huge 5,000 sq m whale beached in the middle of a new housing development in the new quartier of Beauregard, its black glass and concrete exterior unsullied by any indication of where to enter, its interior unspoiled by a single sign, its exhibits unblemished by a single caption, and its hand-out plan untarnished by anything much at all. Thank goodness for its young, enthusiastic and helpful staff. Three exhibition spaces of 500 sq m, 360 sq m and 140 sq m are sandwiched between an educational service, a centre for documentation with 20,700 catalogues and monographs, dossiers on 4,000 artists, 940 multimendia presentations, collections of periodicals, conservation and specialist ateliers, administration and conference facilities.
This can give the impression of a rather parsimonious gallery to say the least, heightened by sparse exhibits in the first show, the Biennale d’art contemporain de Rennes. Nevertheless it is an exciting place to visit, and an uplifting experience to see contemporary art championed to such an extent at public expense.
ODBC’s building may well be the visible tip of another season’s icebergs of municipal, regional, and ministerial enthusiasm. This latest cultural icon may fall into the same category, but I doubt it. The Frac are determined to show work in out-of-the-way places as well as in their new homes. The French initiative appears to be here to stay despite the government’s austerity programme.
Meanwhile, for all the Arts Council England’s priorities for 2011-15, its 10-year strategic framework for the arts set out five goals supported by 13 priorities. While it will be ‘using our investment to ensure excellent art happens’, and ‘strengthening the distribution of excellent art’, nowhere in the Arts Council’s plan for delivering its strategy is there any reference to anything comparable with the Frac, its aspirations or its building programme.
It talks of ‘a transition year’, the ‘development of thinking towards the museum and library development work’ – whatever that means, and ‘soliciting further debate’. The Arts Council’s Area Plans talks about ‘shaping a single vision’ and how it ‘is a powerful advocate for arts and culture’ with ‘a vital development role for the arts in England, working with the sector and other partners to identify challenges, seize opportunities and address gaps in provision’. The section on ‘Investing’ is just two paragraphs concluding with the claim it will explore ‘the opportunities that can be grasped through an integrated approach’. I’m not making this up.
It appears that the fat lady has sung. At the very least, she is waiting in the wings, gargling with honey and lemon juice. ‘Renaissance in the Regions’ is ‘a programme to transform England’s regional museums’ that in total will invest less than the FRAC acquisition budgets alone, and its capital investment plan just over half the cost of the new home of Frac Bretagne. The Arts Council chief executive, Alan Davey, writes of ‘heaven in a wild flower’ but his breadth of ambition appears unachievable by such a reduced, under-funded organisation that is now incapable of delivering on its mission.
Davey may see ‘the transfer of museums to the Council as an opportunity’ but championing the acquisition of Old Masters (much as I love them) at the expense of the contemporary is a dead end. Times have changed. ‘An act of vandalism that will impoverish us all’ was one greeting for the cuts to the arts budgets last year. As organisations were guillotined and grants shrunk, the need to take risks with the arts has been ignored.
Public cash matters. Our Olympians reached the top thanks to state support. Being the best in the arts is no different. Not Tate Modern, not The Sage Gateshead, not even the Lowry; none of them were guaranteed to succeed. In the decade to 2007, the government estimated two million new jobs and more than £16bn of exports were generated by the creative industries. So much of our best talent started in publicly funded projects. The failure of The Public in West Bromwich, that went into administration before it even opened, gave MPs an easy target at which to aim before cuts were demanded of the arts. Old news and unrepresentative, it nevertheless was all they needed to justify their axe.
The arts know no boundaries. Yet the creep to lottery funding rings alarm bells all around. And philanthropy on the American model, so espoused by the previous Culture Secretary, is less good at doing new and experimental work. Symbolic of our European woes, the MAXXI in Rome, seen originally as a potential hub for creative artists, has had its public funding cut by three-quarters in 2012 from €7m to €2m and the director replaced by a ministerial commissioner. Espresso is off everywhere, we are back to a Nescafé society.
So yes, the French have always considered themselves an exceptional lot – and with their food, wine, literature and the arts they are not far off the mark. But just as the French economic exception is about to be tested, its ability to defy economic gravity once again may yet impact on another defining exception, its regional support for contemporary art. So yes, these matters are organised in very different ways either side of the Channel, and that difference goes somewhat further than Jamie Oliver stating, in a slightly barmy ad, that ‘they may have style and fashion but we’ve got Nectar points’.
