ROUBAIX, FRANCE - The new Museum of Art and Industry, located in
the Nord-Pas de Calais region of northern France, opened its
doors at the end of October 2001. What makes the opening of
particular interest is that the museum is housed in one of the
town's heritage sites, the Art Deco municipal swimming pool built
between 1927 and 1932 by the French architect Albert Baert.
A thermal temple of the 1930s, the building was designed based on
plans for a Cistercian abbey. The swimming pool was located in a
large nave illuminated by stained glass windows, evoking the
rising and setting sun. During its heyday, the facility boasted a
hairdressing salon, manicurist and pedicurist, an industrial
laundry and steam baths. It was decorated with ceramics and
mosaics having a marine theme, finely wrought balusters and plant
motifs characteristic of the 1930s.
Closed since 1985 for safety reasons, the building has been
renovated and converted into a museum by Jean Paul Philippon, one
of the architects of the Orsay Museum in Paris. The new museum
now houses the city's extensive Applied Arts collection.
Shower cubicles were converted into display windows and
consultation rooms to exhibit textile designs, pieces of
furniture, carpets, Sevres ceramics and an extensive textile
collection of 8,000 sample books, with more than 50,000 examples
of clothing and furnishing fabrics. The Fine Arts collection
follows a chronological and thematic route in the wings
previously reserved for baths, and is devoted to the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries.
The marine motif mosaic around the sides of the pool marks out a
new adaptable feature: sculptures, surround-ing a 130-foot-long
water feature fed by a sandstone Neptune. The monastery garden
has been turned into a botanical garden featuring plants made
from textiles. Among the works in the museum is the famous La
Petite Chatelaine sculpture by Camille Claudel, created in 1896.
For information, 011-33-03-20-69-23-60.
