The Museum at the Drug Transfer Point

Anyone looking to buy or trade crack in the city of Rennes, Brittany, goes to the shopping center in the heart of the Maurepas social housing project. This dilapidated building complex dates back to the 1960s. And as in almost every other French city, the question arises here in the banlieue whether it's even worth renovating the aging buildings and whether these drab neighborhoods can and should be upgraded with new construction.

In Rennes, the city administration has taken a radically optimistic approach. It has now opened its new art museum directly beneath a crumbling residential block. The young architects from the Nantes-based firm Titan, who designed the museum, boldly and energetically transformed a former senior citizens' meeting place into a chic satellite of the venerable Rennes art museum.

The main focus of the museum is 19th-century French painting. The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes is also called the "Little Louvre" because important works of art were brought to Rennes from the Louvre in Paris in 1811. The collection is therefore unusually high-caliber for a medium-sized city.

The curators came up with a special trick for the new satellite. From the collection, which ranges from Egyptian mummies to Greek ceramics, Roman sculptures, Indian paintings, and Japanese lacquerware, selected residents of the social housing estate were each allowed to choose an object, which the artist Isabelle Arthuis photographed in their hands. Thus, the residents themselves are on display in the museum.

The new Museum of Fine Arts in Maurepas is located directly across from the equally new Gros-Chêne metro station. The museum's construction is the result of a policy aimed at "guaranteeing access to cultural life for all." Each year, two free exhibitions will be presented in the new building, one of which will be designed in collaboration with local residents. In addition to the art space, a toy library and a center for young children will be opened, also lovingly designed by the architectural firm Titan.

The large residential building, against which the new museum nestles, is called "La Banana"—not because of its yellow color, but because of its slightly curved floor plan. Its architect, Jean-Gérard Carré, the local "king of social housing projects," designed the gigantic building in the spirit of Le Corbusier. The idea of ​​opening a branch of the museum in this bold, inhospitable, and withering location owes its origins to the art program initiated for the design of the new subway stations in Rennes.

Rennes is the smallest city in France to have two metro lines dug, despite having just over 200,000 inhabitants. Unlike the other stations, Gros-Chêne station hasn't been given an artistic brooch as part of an art-in-architecture program, but instead leads directly to the new branch museum at the drug trafficking site.

"If people don't come to art, art will have to come to the people," seems to be the mantra behind the new building. But is the social housing residents' distance from culture solely a question of proximity? For the director of the new museum, Delphine Galloy, the key word is "jumelage" – partnership. In this case, the museum is to establish a partnership with the immigrant neighborhood. Both museum buildings are not only on the same metro line, but are also intellectually on the same page: Galloy emphasizes that it is a museum with two buildings, and that the new building lacks a content-related focus on immigrants who are supposedly less educated in art history. She finds that arrogant.

Whether social engineering works and whether culture should be used to promote urban transformation remains to be seen. But with Isabelle Arthuis's opening exhibition, "Fantaisies," the director has demonstrated astonishing skill: The art objects displayed in eight display cases are combined with photos of the residents. She has assembled a veritable "cabinet of curiosities"—the curator's German term. It has a folksy feel without being pandering.

The contrast between the dark rooms, with their cavernous concrete walls, and the bright gallery on the lower level is part of the new museum's effective scenography. The glass-brick street facade is reminiscent of the famous Maison de Verre in Paris. A circular oculus provides additional skylight into the hall. A frameless glass skylight band allows visitors to watch others as they look.

The architects also play on the contrast between raw and refined in their choice of materials: the austere, gray concrete is sandblasted, and the semicircular spiral staircase and the circular elevator tower also play with the Betonbrut aesthetic. The exhibited works of art appear all the more delicate in this interior.

Architect François Guinaudeau of the Titan firm had a budget of just €2.5 million for his nearly 400-square-meter building. The ceiling heights and proportions of the galleries were largely dictated by the supporting structure. As with the birthplace of Georges Clemenceau in Mouilleron-en-Pareds, which the same architect had previously redesigned, his interventions remained minimal. In Rennes, it was convenient that the 1962 building was not yet listed as a historic monument.

The entire Maurepas district has been undergoing a transformation as part of the national urban renewal program since 2014. Redefining the role and place of a museum in the city so boldly represents a culmination of efforts in France to improve the poorest neighborhoods.

The new secondary location of the Musée des Beaux-Arts has, for its part, had small satellites set up in the surrounding problem district: The artist Isabelle Cornaro from Paris has designed vandal-proof street furniture, which is being cleverly used for the first participatory exhibition in the new museum.

Like five sculptures, their display cases stand in the urban space and display photographic posters, including black-and-white portraits of selected paintings from the museum's collection. A group of volunteers, called "Les complices," selected the motifs for the "Fantaisies" exhibition.

The fundamental evils of modern post-war urban development—the strict segregation of functions and the lack of jobs in residential areas—cannot be fundamentally overcome with a few million euros. But the new building for the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes demonstrates how a cultural institution can seek, and perhaps even find, physical proximity to sections of the population who are believed capable of more than buying and selling drugs.

Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2 Allée Georges de la Tour, Rennes. Wed–Sun 2–6 pm, free admission. Opening exhibition runs until September 21.