La Piscine

by Bert Hermans · Gouda, NL

Bert Hermans visited this famous former swimming pool in Roubaix (France) during an exhibition of his work at the Lille Grand Palais on March 13-16, 2025. Roubaix's municipal swimming pool opened in 1932, and this beautiful Art Deco building closed its doors as a swimming pool in 1985. In 2001, its function was replaced by La Piscine – Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent. This museum showcases a wide range of artistic movements and presents diverse collections of textiles, sculptures, paintings, contemporary and older works in all styles. The museum's permanent collection has its origins in 1835, when a collection of fabric samples from the many local textile factories was started. By 1898 the collection was housed in the National High School of Arts and Textile Industry (ENSAIT), and was seen as a way of cultivating the tastes of the town's workers, foremen and manufacturers. To this end the collection combined elements of literature, fine-arts, science and industrial products. The ENSAIT museum closed with the onset of World War II, and never reopened. From 1990 the collections were displayed in Roubaix's town hall, in preparation for the opening of La Piscine in 2001. On the ground floor of the basin, around the stretch of water next to the sculpture garden, we find ceramics by Picasso, Dufy, Pignon, Sébastien, Carbonell, and Chagall in the former dressing rooms, now serving as display cases, alongside a large collection of still lifes and an overview of the collection of art and design objects. This applied arts collection is beautifully concluded at the end of the basin by the monumental Sandier portal, a gem from the collection of the National Atelier de Sèvres, which can be found in the museum. This sculpture collection now extends into the new sculpture gallery, which focuses on the production of sculptures at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, with various cross-cutting themes (such as public commissions, private decors, workers' monuments, and portraits) and a focus on several key dates (notably the international or universal exhibitions of 1925, 1931, and 1937). Here we also find works by Rodin, Bourdelle, Sarrabezolles, Delamarre, Iché, Orloff, Waroquier, Meunier, Maillol, Despiau, Giacometti, Lipchitz, Laurens, Miklos, and Gargallo. This space opens onto an identical reconstruction of the studio of the sculptor Henri Bouchard, which extends into a room where the materials and techniques of sculpting are explained.