Our procurement policy is to diversify our funding and to fill our gaps

It is a true Museum. The light is screened, the atmosphere quiet, voluntarily sobre presentation. "It's a party taken, explains Gilles Ciment, the Director of the international city of the comic strip, to bring back the BD to the nature of work of graphic art.". The work premium, and nothing is faster than the spectacular staging obsoletes. "The works presented in the showcases lead visitors on a journey of chronological first through the major themes of the narrative figuration. Of the four sections that give rhythm to the 1,300 square metres of the permanent exhibition, the most important is indeed dedicated to the history of the ninth art, considered through four sequences: major alumni, 1833 to 1920, the golden age to the middle of the 1950s, and then transition to the adult to the 1980s comic strip, finally the contemporary period, marked by the comic writers and the explosion of manga. In Windows, where are exposed plates original, newspapers and albums, include common snipe, Tintin, as well as Flash Gordon and Tarzan, Blueberry, Asterix or Titeuf. Second section, the workshop addresses the technical aspects of the creation of the comic, then the exposure is interested in the aesthetics of the BD, finally a gallery is devoted to temporary exhibitions.

A permanent renewal

In the interests of good conservation of works, original drawings and plates are replaced three times per year. "Thus, continues Gilles Ciment, the visitor can discover new works every four months."

The Museum is directly derived from the Festival of the comic strip, the first edition of which took place in 1974. The invited artists took the habit of donating original, the curator of the Museum of fine arts of the city together in a gallery which is dedicated to them. In 1984, Jack Lang, then Minister of Culture, launching the creation of a national Centre of the comic strip and Angoulême (CNBDI) image. Installed in a brewery decommissioned and rehabilitated by Roland Castro, CNBDI, inaugurated in January 1990, includes, in addition to the Museum, a library and a Center for digital imaging. In 2005, the decision is made to transfer the Museum, in the narrow in its walls, across the Charente. The selected building is an old chai in cognac in the 1850s, become a felts for the printing plant. To make the link between the two buildings, a 190-metre bridge, which ensures a bronze statue of Corto Maltese, is drawn from one bank to another.

The site of development of this area of 4,000 square metres is entrusted to the team of the Parisian architect Jean-François Bodin, who has recently completed the renovation of the Museum of French Monuments at the palais de Chaillot and will tackle the Picasso Museum. The operation cost 9.65 million euros, financed by State (17,23) and Europe (40), the region Poitou-Charentes (17,23), the balance coming from the Joint Union pole image (Magelis) piloted by the Department of the Charente. At the same time, the CNBDI, which was an association, gave way to a COEP (public institution for cultural cooperation), called the "international city of the comic strip and image". The city CAP, in addition to the Museum, a House of authors which allowed residential designers and scriptwriters French and foreign, and a rich library of 43,000 albums and périodiques 115.000, whose collections are partly fed since 1984 by the legal deposit of publications of cartoons.

"With more than 8,000 plates and original drawings, 80 francophone, the Museum of Angoulême is the only public collection dedicated to the band drawn by France and the first in importance in Europe, said its curator, Ambroise Lassalle.". Our procurement policy is to diversify our funding and to fill our gaps. But the escalation of the price of the original boards in recent years and the scarcity of donations requires us to be careful. We welcome also to more deposits, as recently all of the originals of the French Illustrator Calvo, entrusted by his grandnephew.

Opened end of June, the Museum of Angoulême allowed early August his 10.000e visitor. The objective of officials is to reach the threshold of 100,000 entries annual.