Modern art. The Villeneuve d’Ascq museum closes, the works will travel from Shanghai to Dunkirk

Miro, Léger, Picasso, Modigliani… The inhabitants of Hauts-de-France have often experienced their first great emotions at the LAM in front of paintings by famous artists. Sunday September 29, 2024, the Villeneuve d’Ascq Museum of Modern Art closes its doors for a one and a half year project. The works will set sail, from Shanghai to Dunkirk.

The red brick and glass museum has lost its splendor. Inaugurated in 1983, it is getting a makeover. The dismantling of the roof has started, new insulation will be installed. Then, it will be the turn of the glazing to be changed. A renovation planned over a year and a half and which requires emptying the premises of all its works.

The last exhibition temporary, that of the Italian artist Marisa Merz, is in the process of packing up. Direction Turin or the salons of some private collectors.

Marie-Amélie Senot, head of the LAM’s contemporary art collection, says: “When it’s a dismantling, the works have arrived, we know them, we’ve seen them in exhibitions, we noticed them at the start. It’s not easy but it’s simpler, we already know the works very well.”

With the permanent collection, the matter will be more difficult. Only 10% of the works are exhibited. The museum has 8 000 and, some pieces of outsider art are bulky and fragile.

The best-known masterpieces, those of Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Juan Miro, have already left the museum’s walls. They found refuge in Shanghai.

Only one marble, a woman’s head by Modigliani, did not make the trip. It is the only one known to the artist. Marie-Amélie Senot explains : “She hasn’t left. We consider it too dangerous a trip for her, we don’t want her to take the plane. She will stay in the region.”

If some works will lie dormant out of sight, others will go on a journey. Six exhibitions outside the walls are planned the temps of the works.

Among the latest acquisitions, this work by Kosovar Petrite Alilage will be visible next year at the Condition publique in Roubaix, “Les lièvres boxeurs” will go to Dunkirk.

Sébastien Faucon, director and curator of the LAM, concludes that this is the opportunity “to go to places, territories in which LAM is less identified, to make ourselves known and ultimately bring new audiences when we reopen”.

So, the idea of ​​a “Vagabond LAM” event was born. The director explains: “CIt’s a poetic title, we’re in other people’s homes, on walks, we’re quite free in what we offer, we’re testing new formats, new encounters. We will have an exhibition at the University of Lille, at the city of electricians in Bruay. And also, we will go to different places like cafes to offer workshops, new meetings“.

The reopening of the LAM is planned for February 2026, with a major Kandinsky retrospective.