The sun rises over the Vieux Port of Marseille, a gutsy, gritty industrial city that's about to get a year in the international spotlight.
MARSEILLE, France--Once a year, the European Union designates one or two cities as Capitals of Culture. This year it's Talinn (Estonia) and Turku (Finland). The concept was hatched by two glamorous and popular personalities in the world of art who both happened to be the Ministers of Culture in their home countries, the Frenchman Jack Lang and the Greek actress Melina Mercouri. The first city named was, not surprisingly, Athens, the second Florence, the third Paris.
Since then, the nod has gone mostly to second-tier cities like Liverpool, Oporto, and Talinn (to name three most people have even heard of), the theory being that Europe has more than enough "culture" in the traditional capitals already, but people tend to overlook the riches in their own backyards, and or else blissfully ignore what's beyond their borders.
Just think of what Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum did for the grimy port of Bilbao when the city fathers moved the rundown, downtown industrial zone into the suburbs and transformed the shipyards into a cultural neighborhood: a huge increase in tourism, not to mention international respsect.
Just think, too, of the World's Fairs and Expos around the globe, how they've turned the spotlight on cities like, ahem, Seattle, and left them not only with buildings (like the Space Needle) but also a new sense of civic cohesion.
The EU, for its part, is doling out its favors for a year's worth of cultural identity. In 2013 it's the turn of Provence and its largest metropolis, Marseille. There's a complicated website, Marseille-Provence2013 and an ambitious calendar of events not just for the city but for its surroundings as well, events that will include a traditional transhumance (the annual return of sheep and cows from their summer pastures in the mountains down to the lowlands, bells clanging as the colorful procession makes its way through hillside villages) along with horses from the Camargue, Morocco and Italy. Ten new venues are promised for exhibitions of regional artists (Cezanne, especially), one of them to be built by Frank Gehry.
If this all sounds a bit like a grab-bag of wishful thinking, you wouldn't be alone. The Marseille project is mired in bureaucracy and lacks creative cohesion, but that's par for the course in grand projects. It's also way behind schedule. The earnest young woman who briefed a conference of international travel organizers on Marseille-Provence 2013 earlier this month said the organizers hoped to have a fee schedule for individual events finalized by the time the world's tour operators gather in Paris at end of March, 2012. That would be great, if the events were being held in 2014 or 2015, not 2013.
The Gehry project, to house photography exhibits in Arles, was set back by at least six months this summer when authorities refused to issue building permits unless the design was changed so it wouldn't obscure views of the clocher (bell-tower) of the nearby church of Saint-Honoratus. Gehry's building may not be completed in time for the closing ceremonies.
France is the most popular country in the world for international tourists, with over 75 million visitors a year. Provence and the Riviera are already the most popular destinations outside of Paris, so, one wonders, why does Marseille even bother?
Well, Marseille is no stranger to adversity or to the condescension of French intellectuals who underestimate the ability of people in the south of France to get things done, even if it all comes together only at the last minute. In that respect, it's kind of like Italy.
And if it takes an international shot in the arm to get things going, so be it. "Cultural Capital of Europe" has a nice ring to it, a real appeal to the bickering political parties and business interests in Provence. In that respect, it's kind of like "World's Fair" would have sounded in Seattle some 50 years ago.
Will they pull it off? Will anybody show up? Anybody who wasn't heading to Provence anyway? Will it have a lasting impact beyond 2013? Is it anything more than grandiose self-promotion? If you start asking questions like that, you won't even get started.
My trip to Marseille was sponsored by the regional tourism authority of Provence.
Automatic comments have been disabled. Please write to CornichonComments AT gmail DOT com and they will be posted manually.
Leave a comment