SCENE/SEEN
Marseille: City on the Verge of a Culture Buzz
An installation project by Frédéric Moser and Philippe Schwinger at the FRAC arts space during the Printemps de l'Art Contemporain last year.
By COLINE MILLIARD
Published: May 13, 2011
Things are changing fast in Marseille. The southern city, still sometimes called “the Naples of France” for its reputation as being messy and unruly, is undergoing a major facelift, and Zaha Hadid’s aquamarine high-rise overlooking the industrial port is but one sign of this rapid transformation.
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Art-O-Rama
A work by the artist duo Projet Diligence presented by the gallery Elaine Lévy Project for the Art-O-Rama annual art fair in Marseille in September.
In 2009, the contemporary art spaces’ network Marseille Expos began Le Printemps de l’art contemporain, a three-day event during which daily itineraries focus on the city’s key artsy neighborhoods. The initiative quickly found its audience: the first year it attracted 3,000 people, the second 5,000. More than 7,000 art enthusiasts were expected for the third edition, which ends this weekend.
Marseille’s forthcoming status as European Capital of Culture in 2013 doubtless contributes to the momentum: here is a not-to-be missed chance to upgrade the city’s cultural infrastructure, expand on its existing artistic landscape and dream of what it could become. “Among all the French cities that applied to be European Capital of Culture, Marseille was the one which needed it most,” said Bernard Latarjet, the former director of Marseille-Provence 2013 (the organization in charge of the event), who spearheaded the city’s application.
Beside the expected behemoth exhibitions, in situ art commissions and street interventions taking place throughout 2013 — loosely articulated around the theme of the Mediterranean Sea — several key venues are to be unveiled. For the contemporary visual arts alone, these will include a €25 million building designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma for the Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur — the regional art center known as the FRAC — and a €23 million renovation and extension of the Friche de La Belle de Mai , a former tobacco factory dedicated to the creative industries and not-for-profit cultural associations since 1993.
Marseille-Provence 2013 is building on an active local art scene, but one that has suffered in recent years from a lack of visibility, and, many art professionals say, a desperate need for a museum of international stature. “We can’t play the role of a museum,” said Dorothée Dupuis, the director of Triangle , an arts association primarily dedicated to providing artists’ residencies in the Friche. “But if we had in Marseille two contemporary art museums really doing their job, the art scene here would be even more vibrant than in Lyon,” she added, in reference to France’s second largest city, which has built up a buzzing cultural scene over the past decade with its critically acclaimed biennial and Musée d’art contemporain.
“A FRAC is not a museum,” said Pascal Neveux, the FRAC’s director since 2006. “It’s a place for research and experimentation.” Marseille does have a large and once-prestigious contemporary art museum — the city-run Musée d’Art Contemporain , or MAC — but the city council has allocated it such a small budget in recent years that it now barely survives (having co-curated an exhibition there in 2010, I’m acutely aware of its situation). In the past, a significant acquisition budget allowed the MAC to purchase key pieces by luminaries like Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gabriel Orozco. Those days are gone — and despite its new projects, Marseille-Provence 2013 has no revitalization planned for the MAC.
“The city council hasn’t at all understood that culture is an important vector for development both in regard to a city’s image, and to its economy,” said Mr. Neveux. “The MAC has an incredible collection, but it isn’t shown off or looked after.” Accusations of this kind against the city council’s cultural policy cast a shadow over the enthusiasm surrounding the forthcoming Capital of Culture, and they come up repeatedly. Representatives of Marseille’s museums did not respond to requests for comment.
Marc and Josée Gensollen, prominent collectors in Marseille, have taken things matters into their own hands. Through word of mouth alone, they welcome up to 5,000 visitors per year to their converted-workshop private home La Fabrique, the ground floor and basement of which are transformed into pristine viewing rooms. The banquet table is by Franz West, the lighting by Liam Gillick; the rest of the Gensollens’ collection features works by the likes of Sol LeWitt and Laurence Weiner that wouldn’t be out of place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “We also do conferences, because the museum can’t do them anymore,” Mrs. Gensollen said.
But however important the Gensollens’ open-handed initiative, the bulk of Marseille’s contemporary art scene is to be found at the other end of the wealth spectrum. It is driven by grassroots, not-for-profit art spaces supported, or partly supported, by local authorities and often run on a shoestring.
“Marseille’s strength lies in its numerous laboratory-like art spaces,” said Erika Negrel, the former manager of Marseille Expos, the art spaces’ network, which was set up in 2007 and today counts 20 organizations.
The network started with a simple idea: publishing leaflets mapping the members’ locations and allowing art lovers to navigate gallery spaces in the city’s artsy areas, including the market place La Plaine, the Vieux Port, Marseille’s oldest quarter Le Panier and the old industrial zone of La Belle de Mai.
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