Former public primary school. Rue du Pont du Lodi 2. Photo: Celette / Wikipedia
That is at least the assurances of the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, who confirmed at the end of November that the "Maison du dessin de presse" will open its doors in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Work is scheduled to begin at the end of 2025 and the site is due to open to the public in 2027.
In 2020 Macron presented the project as one of his wishes and on 11 January 2021 he declared that this house of the cartoon would be installed in Paris, in a former school located at 2 rue du Pont-de-Lodi with a surface area of 1,500 m2, not far from Notre-Dame de Paris. Since then, nothing more has been heard of its construction.
A year later, Le Figaro quoted sources in the Elysée as saying that the "house was intended to be a place for exhibitions and meetings and even a refuge for cartoonists persecuted in their own countries" and that it would work in a network, especially with the National Library of France, which keeps various cartoon archives, as the country has a long tradition of press cartoons.
It was also announced at the time that a national press"conservatory" would be opened in Amiens in 2028 to house some of the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France(BnF).
The idea of a "house of press cartoons" was first mooted in 2007 by cartoonist Georges Wolinski, and then his widow, journalist Maryse Wolinski(who died in December 2021), picked up the torch for the project after the 7 January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine.
The "Wolinski mission" proposed a global action plan to promote the press cartoon as part of the fine arts, including the preservation of archives.
In September 2021, Maryse Wolinski, along with six other press cartoonists, asked Emmanuel Macron in a letter to commit to creating a"house of satirical and press cartoons" as he had promised in 2020.
According to the Ministry of Culture's press release, the "Maison du dessin de presse" will have three main missions:
- Heritage: a permanent exhibition will cover more than two hundred years of the history of the press cartoon in France, from the French Revolution to the present day. Through original works and reproductions, visitors will discover the sources of the press cartoon and its evolution according to political, social and aesthetic changes. A temporary exhibition space will host drawings from all periods, produced in France and abroad;
- Creation: the Maison du Dessin de Presse will host press cartoonists who will practice their art through residencies, courses for all audiences or shows accompanied by drawings. The building will host workshops for cartoonists and a space for performances, meetings and outreach activities;
- Transmission: press cartoons require a capacity for understanding and interpretation on the part of those who see them. Although the national education system, local authorities, associations and cartoonists themselves have taken many excellent initiatives over the years, the Maison du dessin de presse intends to contribute to this mediation effort, in particular by addressing schools, within the framework of moral and civic education, artistic and cultural education and media and information education programmes.
