The instant that I saw these images of La Piscine-Musée d’Art et d’Industrie André Diligent in Lille, France, two other Paris moments blasted into my consciousness as perfect reminders as why I adore the French. In the first reverie Meeting Up with the Mona Lisa & a Classical Louvre Grave Yard, I wrote:

After meeting up with the Mona Lisa,  I wandered around in search of classical statuary. I found it in the traditional halls, but what really got my attention was the “basement”, the statues that weren’t on display.

They stood “crumbled” and strewn helter skelter one floor down, but visible to onlookers. Peering down into the “graveyard”, I was entertained by blue strobe lights and classical jazz. The effect was totally modern, even if the subjects of my artistic experience were centuries old statues.

 …  The French are never literal in updating their monuments … the IM Pei modern design remains disruptive and unappealing to purists.

Seriously now, can you imagine for one moment Americans not tearing down a gorgeous but now dilapidated Art Deco swimming like this one in Lille to make room for a big box retailer? I can’t.

The real kicker, though, is imagining for one single minute, that America would restore this piscine masterpiece into a museum for classical statuary, at least one female with bare buttocks. Social Conservatives would bomb the place.

These images take me back to one of my first essays French Corruption of American Morality, which I wrote after seeing ‘Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret’ in Paris.

The huge, multi-story X-mark lit up the side of the National Library, inviting all of Paris to partake in its erotic pleasures.

Regular travelers to France know that the country is vastly more liberated than America, in all matters sexual. Can you imagine public funds in this country being used to doll up a metro station, announcing the coming arrival of a sex exhibit!

Originally built between 1927 and 1932 by the architect Albert Baert, the swimming pool had served the people of Roubaix for health and sensory pleasure for over 50 years. The always innovative French said let the pool serve the community in a new way, sharing its magnificent architecture with antiquities.

This fall on October 21, the museum will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Bravo.

Sense and Sensuality | France Understands Responsible Pleasure