Défense et illustration du Musée d’Ethnographie. Repairing Ethnography and exploring the notion of “French” American Collections through museum genealogies

Abstract

This article brings together four episodes of French 19th century museal history through which to explore the tensions inherent to incorporating the (material) culture of others – in this case Pre-Columbian America – into national collections, and the process through which they become part of a national patrimoine. As a guiding thread, we use not a particular collection but the idea of “American French collections” and their association to a specific type of national institution that used them abundantly in its historical genealogy: the idea of a “French national museum of ethnography.”

We offer a historical panorama where Amerindian and Pre-Columbian French collections found themselves at the heart of several debates regarding the definition and function of the museum and during which the need to “repair” – either an object, a national institution or a concept – was invoked.