The governance model of two French national museums of fine arts relocated in the province: Centre Pompidou Metz and Louvre-Lens

The Case of Louvre-Lens: Regional Regeneration Through Cultural Innovation

“…In contrast to Bilbao or Liverpool, where the focus was mainly on the city, the Louvre-Lens project aimed at promoting the development of the entire region linking it with other signifi cant cultural attraction points (e.g. Lille, as the 2004 European capital of culture and the former coal-mining area) and initiatives, purporting the importance of the embeddedness of the museum in its territory (Baudelle & Krauss, 2014).…”

“…One of the most relevant critical points identifi ed at the beginning of the project was the lack of local creative industries (Baudelle & Krauss, 2014) that were considered essential to fulfi l the potential and attractiveness of the area as a culture-creative hub. Th ough this is still a drawback of the project, signifi cant initiatives have been promoted (such as the Louvre-Lens Vallée to unite the cultural industries related to the digitization of cultural assets) to create the favorable cultural and creative environment around the city of Lens, following the theories of Florida (Florida, Mellander, & Stolarick, 2008), but also what was later identifi ed as the ecology of culture approach (Holden, 2015).…”

“…Th e cultural development in the presented case study is coordinated at the regional level, similarly to the development in Sicily (Le Blanc, 2010) and Nuremberg (BialkWolf, Pechlaner, & Nordhorn, 2013), while innovative IT is used to facilitate strong stakeholder engagement, similarly to the case of Genova (Chiabai, Paskaleva, & Lombardi, 2013). In contrast to the cities of Istanbul, Pecs and Essen (Polat, 2013) and Lille (Baudelle & Krauss, 2014), the city of Lens and the wider region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais have not used the capital of culture status to promote themselves internationally. Th e three main core strengths of the cultural development strategy in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais are the presence of an internationally renowned museum (Louvre) in Lens, the WHS designation of the old mining basin, and the former European Capital of culture status of the city of Lille.…”

Learning the Role of Museums as Drivers of Development

“…The decentralization of these two great cultural institutions represented a major opportunity for both cultural decision makers and local politicians, who "hoped to improve social cohesion, identity, reputation, and image. Even if their main objective was to bring culture closer to the citizens, this goal could not be separated from the socioeconomic aspects" [24].…”