A brief history of the collections

Formed over 130 years ago, the MuCEM’s collections are the direct heirs of the Ethnographic Museum at Trocadero Palace in Paris (1878-1936) and the two museums that succeeded it beginning in 1936, the Museum of Man and the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions (MNATP).

The Ethnographic Museum at the Trocadero, the first Parisian ethnographic museum, was created in 1878. Beginning in 1884, a “France Room” was opened beside the Africa and Asia Rooms to present the museum’s French collections (home life, costumes, etc.). That room would be closed in 1928. During that time, close to 8,000 objects were added to the collections.

For the International Exposition of Art and Technology, the Palais de Chaillot was built to replace the old Palais du Trocadéro. At the initiative of Georges Henri Rivière, the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions opened its doors on 1 May 1937 with the aim of giving popular arts the same cultural and scientific importance as fine arts.

At a time when France was in mid-transformation, teams of researchers combed the countryside to collect evidence of a disappearing rural world, based on two main subjects: social and cultural life (religion, rites and feast days, etc.) and material culture (agriculture, crafts, rural furniture, food, etc.).

In 1972, the MNATP’s collections left the basement level of the Palais de Chaillot and were relocated to a building constructed by Jean Dubuisson in the Bois de Boulogne. At the same time, the acquisitions policy was opened up to new fields, including urban crafts and commerce. The museum also established collections that served as a reference in Europe for new domains like circus and carnival arts. In parallel, the museum’s collection of popular prints became one of the largest in France, with masterpieces of classical imagery from the 16^th to the 18^th century.

Planned since the late 1990s, the relocation of the MNATP to Marseille and its conversion into the Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM) was confirmed by the Interministerial Committee for Land Use Planning in 2000. The museum’s acquisitions policy then launched its proactive orientation toward Europe and the Mediterranean.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the acquisitions explore innovative subjects (rock, urban cultures, AIDS, industrial heritage, cuisine, etc.) on French soil and abroad.

The opening of the geographic sphere reached a major turning point in 2005 with the deposit of the European collection from the Museum of Man (more than 30,000 pieces). Also in the early 2000s, an acquisitions policy firmly oriented toward North Africa and the Near East was put in place with the new museum programme.

The MuCEM was inaugurated in Marseille in June 2013.

The new acquisitions, which focus more on the Mediterranean Area, are now made with an eye to consistency with the subjects of the old collection from the MNATP. In this way, for example, the costumes of French regions enter into dialogue with pieces come from North Africa and Turkey, whilst chests from the Queyras Valley and Norman wardrobes mingle with Syrian chests and dressers. The collections’ opening up to Europe and the Mediterranean provides a forceful illustration of the comparative point of view adopted by the MuCEM.

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