The South Opal Museum

Moving permanent collections (&)

A major axis developed by the museum, the vision left by the painters induces a strong relationship between the collections and the territory. Gathered under the term «Berck School», the gaze of these artists, who settled in the second third of the 19th century, highlights the specificity of what was the most important stranding marine of France and helps to characterize its identity in relation to the ports, neighbours or further away, like Étaples or Le Crotoy. The museum thus plays a special and singular role in the local memory of which it is the only custodian since this singular fishing has not left, in Berck, in its urban landscape, the markers of its former existence (no quays or associated harbour district), and his death announced in the first quarter of the twentieth century, will also mark the disappearance of craft activities related to him (shipyards, roperies, fumeries, basketry, etc.).
The Opal Coast and more specifically Berck are a home for these artists attracted by the seaside (in vogue), the picturesque or the exotic (of a coast and its inhabitants), the mundane, and the hospitable that the train takes only three hours from Paris. Thus in 1873 Edouard Manet came to paint on the beach, succeeds him Eugène Boudin, then it is around Ludovic Napoleon Lepic, around which this community will be formed. Francis Tattegrain, Eugène Trigoulet, Charles Roussel, Jan Lavezzari will produce between 1880 and 1945) which is now the heart of the museum’s collections. The sea, the beach are their first and main subjects. Translating nature, its metamorphoses according to the days and seasons, as well as the life that takes place there, concentrates all their attention. Everyone will never cease to experience on the canvas all the visual sensations. Sometimes, naturalist, sometimes impressionist, or expressionist. Sparkling waters, laconism and evanesce of the beach certainly, but the interior of the land, the wild dunes, offer artists the means of an increasingly sensitive exploration of nature. Vast and untamed, they are like the beach and the tides, the occasion of a direct confrontation, "on the motive". All works are the reduction of a physical space, they are also represented and concentrated spaces, nevertheless their power of suggestion is immense. A simple line creates a horizon, a point of color creates a vibrant light, a undulating touch creates the movement. Beyond the subjects represented, it is first in these constituent elements of the works that their own substances are discovered.
Therefore, the museum’s view of these works and artists today must not be limited to the simple documentary restitution of a bygone past. The works, exacerbated perhaps by their fashionable naturalism in the Parisian salons of the 19th century, also contain our more contemporary questions: evolution and transformation of the landscape and inhabitants, evolution of thoughts and modes of representation, contemporary evolutions and restorations of sensations…

Incursions and excursions: temporary exhibitions

Temporary exhibitions, cornerstones of the renewal of the gaze, stirring creativity as well as curiosity are moments of development, interpretations and studies of the collections of the museum and the Berckois territory. The temporary exhibitions wish to offer a singular lighting, particular and complementary to the permanent collections. They help to enrich the perception of our relationship to history, to the work of art and to the territory. By using the work of artists of our time (individually or collectively solicited), collections and territory are newly questioned. Temporary exhibitions (as well as the regular renewal of permanent collections) allow for both historical and artistic perspectives.
A combination of works of art and objects, permanent collections and temporary exhibitions are also presented in an original and dynamic museum, combining works and interpretive elements. Conceived as a space that opens on the outside and in the light of our current «world conceptions», the museum, conceived and perceived as a «school of the gaze» allows to understand the work and its environment. The hanging of the permanent collections is deliberately moving and allows a great apprehension of the collections as a whole, while the temporary exhibitions offer spaces for transversal reflections.