Louvre Lens unveils redesigned Galerie du Temps with 250 works

Twelve years after its opening, the Louvre Lens in northern France has completely redesigned its central Galerie du Temps, commissioning creative agency Atoy to create a 'river of time' scenography. The 3,000-square-meter, 120-meter-long gallery now presents 250 works, mostly on loan from the Louvre Paris and other national collections, with only ten pieces retained from the previous installation. The chronological span has been extended to include 20th-century works and prehistoric artifacts. A floral obelisk by Niki de Saint Phalle, lent by landscape designer Catherine Morbach, greets visitors at the entrance, dialoguing with Arcimboldo's Four Seasons inside. Other new loans include 4th-century BCE sphinxes, a 15th-century gold statuette of Chen Mi Zang, a 17th-century inlaid wooden model of the Holy Sepulchre, a 19th-century Nigerian wood sculpture, and paintings by Jacopo Bassano (Two Dogs, 1548), Canova's marble Cupid and Psyche (1797), Velázquez, Goya, Delacroix, Rousseau, and Eva Nielsen (1983). Over 200 local residents contributed to visitor support materials, with illustrations by Alexie Hiles. The museum, designed by SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) on a former mining site, remains free to visit.