NOGENT-SUR-SEINE.- On the 26 March 2017 the Musée Camille Claudel will open to the public. This is an important and unique cultural event. The public will have access to the world’s biggest collection of works by Camille Claudel.

Camille Claudel’s calling as a sculptor developed in Nogent-sur-Seine, while she was living there from 1876 to 1879, when her father was registrar of mortgages. At 12 years old, Camille Claudel discovered clay, and developed her artistic skills. On the advice of the sculptor Alfred Boucher, Camille Claudel then went on to prove herself, and to meet the best sculptor of her age, Auguste Rodin.

Naturally, the mark left by Camille Claudel on Nogent-sur-Seine continued with the work of Alfred Boucher, who gave our town its first museum. Today, the museum takes on a whole new dimension. Visitors can become intimately acquainted with the work of Camille Claudel.

Every room of this museum is in step with the remarkable scientific and cultural project through its educational aspect: understanding the place of sculpture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the emulation of great artists and Camille Claudel’s passion.

Nogent-sur-Seine: opening of the Musée Camille Claudel
The first museum dedicated to this long-neglected sculptor also illustrates one of the most prolific periods of French sculpture.

The museum had originally been scheduled to open in 2014, but the date was pushed back due to the original public-private partnership status of the project. It was almost as though destiny was conspiring, once again, to prevent this great artist from receiving the universal recognition she deserved. The museum is now owned and run entirely by the town of Nogent-sur-Seine.

The museum in numbers:
• 250 works (200 of them sculptures, 67 short and long-term loans, 43 sculptures by Camille Claudel, 37 photographs and engravings, 11 paintings, 2 drawings)

• 8 documentary films: 2 projection rooms and 5 screens integrated in the museum; 10 experts projected in a temporary exhibition space

• A building covering 2,645 sq m

• Permanent exhibition space: 983 sq m • Temporary exhibition space: 300 sq m

vThe town of Nogent-sur-Seine
Nogent-sur-Seine has a population of 6,300 people and is the administrative centre of its canton and a sub-prefecture of the Aube department. The town is 100km south-east of Paris, between Brie and Champagne. Its river port, under development, and industry that includes agribusiness, renewable energy, nuclear energy, machinery, a paper mill and a logistical centre, contribute to the town’s dynamism. It’s also a centre of craft and commerce.

A 19th-century atmosphere
It’s pleasant to stroll through the streets of Nogent-sur-Seine. A walk along the river and on the banks of Olive Island plunges you into a 19th-century atmosphere that gives the town its charm. You can see fine houses where famous people once stayed, such as Henri IV, Louis XIV and Napoleon, and places that inspired Flaubert in his novel A Sentimental Education. In their youth, Camille Claudel and her brother Paul lived there. This was where Camille’s talent started as she moulded the local clay. She was to become a great sculptor, while Paul would become a poet and French ambassador.

In Flaubert’s footsteps…
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was born in Rouen but he stayed many times in Nogent–sur-Seine, where his father’s family were from. The town was important in his life and work. His novel A Sentimental Education is set in the town and represents its landscape, monuments and inhabitants. He gives such detailed descriptions of it that they are both a valuable historical document and an inspiration to discover the place.

A remarkable cultural heritage
There are a number of notable historic buildings in Nogent, such as the Church of St Laurence, built in several stages in the 15th and 16th centuries. The bones of the lovers Héloïse and Abélard were brought here during the Revolution, before being transferred to Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. The church has sculptures by Ramus, Dubois and Boucher. The Mills, documented on the river since 862, developed with the town. They were rebuilt in 1908 after being destroyed by fire. Today the building houses the administrative offices of a grain company.

The beautiful wetlands of Monteuil, across the river from Nogent, are a living laboratory in the flood plain of the Haute Seine valley. The area is well-known for its diversity of flaura and fauna. For nature lovers, there is also the arboretum on Olive Island on the Seine.

The architecture of the new museum
The architect is Adelfo Scaranello, based in Besançon, where he is currently charged with restoring the Fine Arts and Archaeology Museum, the oldest public museum in France, due to reopen in 2018. Since 2005 he has been associate professor at the School of Architecture of Marne-la-Vallée. His approach is to develop the aspects of a building that are linked to local characteristics, hence his “measured architecture” for the specific site of the Musée Camille Claudel. Built up against the ‘Claudel house’, the three-storey building with large plate-glass windows, imagined by the architect as “a lighthouse visible by day as well as by night”, adds different volumes. It uses the local brick that is a feature of the neighbouring houses.

An island museum
“In the existing context, our intention was to articulate the preserved buildings with the new volumes. Together they form an urban island in the heart of the town, making up a suite of exhibition spaces.

There are views from the museum onto the surrounding streets which combine the history of the place with its new functionality. From an architectural point of view, the museum’s mass relates to the scale of the neighbouring buildings and the wider landscape. The museum’s location, on a small hill within the historic centre, makes it a local landmark, in the same way as the church, the Great Mill and the nuclear plant, which make up the urban skyline of Nogent-sur-Seine.”

Brick
“Brick is the main material used in the museum building. This choice echoes the neighbouring buildings, for which brick is used in decorative façades, so that it is both distinct from and in harmony with its surroundings.

“Bricks are made of clay, which in its malleable form, links to sculptors, who transform the material with their hands. This aspect led to us choose bricks made using traditional methods.”

Presentation of the works
“The starting point and the ultimate objective of this museum was to come up with an architectural design to showcase the works of Camille Claudel. Thus the museum design has been pared down to its simplest expression: the power of the artist is allowed to speak for itself.

“Our objective was to achieve a harmony of colours between the floors, walls and furnishings as the best backdrop for the works.” --Adelfo Scaranello, architect