Directory of French public collections of Oceanian objects
This directory presents the French public collections of Oceanian objects by city of conservation. Published in 2007, this reference source is still useful for researchers and the discovery of the diversity of the collections of museums in France.
Credits and thanks: this content was originally published on the Joconde website. It was created in 2007 by Roger Boulay, who was then in charge of the Direction des Musées de France. At its first online launch, this directory benefited from the careful rereading of Anne Lavondès, with the help of Laurick Zerbini (University of Lyon) who reported some collections to Roger Boulay, that of Marie Durand (trainee of the Ecole du Louvre), the collaboration of Mathilde Huet (D.M.F, base Joconde) and Jean-Michel Rouzou (D.S.I) for its online on the Internet, as well as that of many collections managers concerned. May they all be warmly thanked here.
A collective reflection on the updating of this directory was launched in November 2022.
Download the directory
The directory is available here in spreadsheet download (version of 16/11/2022).
This spreadsheet has been geographically classified in 2022, by region, department, municipality and museum name, in line with the official list of museums in France. Some institutions not endowed with the name "Musée de France" are nevertheless included in this directory which respects the information listed in 2007.
The version in its original layout, including the names of institutions in 2007 and the addresses of places of conservation, is also accessible.
Discover the Oceanian objects preserved in France
The directory lists the collections and not the objects themselves. We invite you to discover Oceanian collections online on Mona Lisa, collective catalogue of museums in France, or museum catalogues keeping this type of collections but also through virtual exhibitions Links to reference sources at the bottom of the page invite you to explore this approach.
Presentation of the directory (text by Roger Boulay from 2007)
What does this directory cover?
This directory presents the collections of Oceania by city of conservation in France. For convenience the term "Oceania" includes Oceania Island, New Guinea and Australia.
The directory includes a heading "Collections" : This is not an exhaustive description of the inventory of Oceanian pieces of the museum concerned, but it simply mentions the authors of the most significant collections and the date of collection of these objects when known. Failing this, a range of probable or estimated dates is specified.
When the author of the collection has made collections in Oceania, the dates and functions are specified in the heading "Date and place of assignment or collection". In cases where historical research has not yet been carried out, the identity of the donor or collector can be reduced to a name without name and dates.
The third section gives the collection acquisition dates and conditions. The most common geographical origins are reported.
What volume of objects and institutions?
The total number of objects was given by the managers of each collection. When counting was in progress, the author gave an estimate which should only marginally alter the overall totals. The results, to date (April 2007), are as follows: 64,017 Oceanian objects could be identified in 116 French establishments (including Outremer).
It should be noted that if the Quai Branly Museum (Paris) brings together almost half of the objects (30,883), the two museums of the French Pacific Territories are in second and third place respectively: Tahiti (11.500) and Noumea (3.750).
In 2007, the remaining 17,884 objects were distributed over 113 other locations, of which:
- La Rochelle, Natural History Museum (1.859)
- Saint-Germain-en-Laye, museum of national archaeology (1,800, a single collection 1998)
- Lille, Museum of Natural History and Geology (1,250)
- Toulouse, Natural History Museum (1.196)
- Saint-Symphorien-sur-Coise, Oceanian Museum of Marist Fathers (1000 - estimate)
- Issoudun, Saint Roch Hospice Museum (973)
- Périgueux, Museum of Art and Archaeology of Périgord (917)
- Lyon, Guimet Museum (850)
- Bordeaux, Museum of Aquitaine (747)
Check out here a list indicating the number of Oceanian objects listed by museum or institution in 2007.
Inventory (text by Roger Boulay from 2007)
A fluctuating interest in these collections
After the prosperous period of the creation of natural history museums during the second half of the 19th century, the Oceanian collections see the interest that is brought to them decrease appreciably to reach a state of quasiforgetting around 1930, when the last major collections were made (Mission Rey Lescure for the Musée de l'Homme and Voyage de la Korrigane). The colonial exhibitions as well as those organized by religious congregations will occasionally revive this interest in a rather anecdotal way: the exhibitions of «savages» often accompanied by displays of strange objects always arouse a certain enthusiasm on the part of the public. Only the interest carried by some modern artists and the Surrealists contributes, in a very confidential way it must be emphasized, to create a market for this type of objects and a pretext for collections and exhibitions in art galleries, all these activities being concentrated between the church of Saint Germain and Montparnasse.
In reality no collection will benefit from a major renovation of its presentations before the 1980s (1983, the date of opening of the African and Oceania rooms of the Museum of Fine Arts of Angoulême), with the exception of course of that which was undertaken by Georges-Henri Rivière for the Musée de l'Homme and the setting up by Jean Guiart of the presentations of the Musée de la Porte Dorée (around 1975) under the leadership of André Malraux. In the vast majority of cases the presentations remain those of the 19th century despite the progressive abandonment of the evolutionist theories that guided the whole museography of that time.
The crisis of colonialism and the ill conscience that agitated most intellectual circles in the immediate post-war period did the rest. Our collections, when they were not already abandoned, or in the process of destruction by negligence, were left in the state in museums whose means became increasingly weak or, in some cases, non-existent.
Sometimes an unexpected donation enriched an older collection as was the case with the collection of Doctor Lhomme in Angoulême (1934), or that, due to chance, of the governor Bouge in Chartres (1970), nothing, indeed, relating Louis-LouisJoseph Bouge in the city of Chartres. In other cases, it is the activity of a passionate curator who makes it possible to further enrich the Oceanian collections of his museum: Doctor Etienne Loppé in La Rochelle obtained in 1923 a large deposit from the Musée naval du Louvre and inaugurated 14 new rooms in 1926, he also acquired in 1929 2000 objects mostly from the Oceanian Blin collection.
Only a few anthropologists specializing in the Pacific expressed interest in these collections, but these are very marginal cases. Fritz Sarasin of the Basel Museum visited the French collections in the provinces (La Rochelle, Le Havre, Toulouse, Bordeaux, etc.) in order to publish his reference work (1929) on the material culture of New Caledonia, it thus makes possible the publication of major pieces of Kanak heritage. Speiser, his colleague, did the same for the French collections concerning Vanuatu which he published the same year. In 1928, Karl von den Steinen published a book on Marquesan collections referring to regional collections (Caen, Douai, Boulogne sur Mer, etc.).
In fact, it was especially a few art lovers and collectors, such as Dr Stephen Chauvet (1885-1950), who were most active in their relations with museums.
In his correspondence (1935) with Etienne Loppé, the curator of the Musée de La Rochelle, Chauvet emphasized his interest in provincial collections, noting those of Douai, Rennes, Brest, Toulouse, Libourne … He helped organize in 1930 one of the first exhibitions of Oceanian art with two other art lovers, F. Poncetton and A. Portier, for which he will bring to Paris what he designated as «provincial treasures». This was one of the rare occasions when we could see some major pieces of the provincial collections.
The example of La Rochelle is, with some very rare other institutions, in intense contrast with the rest of the hundred museums holding Oceanian works where one is often content, even during the pre-war period, to record donations (which do not stop) and manage these collections. Some, among the most prestigious, will also fall into the oblivion of some reserves little frequented. This will be the case for exotic collections linked to universities often abandoned, and unfortunately in many cases looted. The Bérard collection (a corvette on the Rhine, a companion of Dumont d'Urville and Duperrey, etc.) at the University of Montpellier is not quite out of the woods at the moment. As for that of the Faculty of Medicine of Bordeaux, it recently benefits from a renewed interest after we had left its windows open to all for years. The destinies of the Colonial Museums collections, starting with the Musée des Colonies de la Porte Dorée in Paris, that of Marseilles or that of Nantes were even worse when we did not let everyone use in the windows to stock up on costumes for exotic evenings we left them abandoned.
The war with its crates (Le Havre, Boulogne-sur-Mer, etc.) and its bombings (Douai, Caen and its Dumont d'Urville collection, etc.) will do the rest to ensure these objects a long sleep.
Renewed interest and resumption of Inventories
The first inventories and recollections (these are indeed inventories on the object and not surveys by mail whose very low reliability is known) were taken again immediately after the war on the initiative of Marie-Charlotte Laroche of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
She was a pioneer in this field, and in 1945 she published an article in the Journal de la Société des Océanistes calling for an inventory of all Oceanian collections.
In 1953 it published partial inventories of the collections of Toulouse and Rouen. And in 1966 a list of the objects preserved at the Natural History Museum of Le Havre. The task was difficult because at that time most of the collections were not even searchable.
A few years later, Anne Lavondès, renowned specialist of Polynesian cultures (ethnologist at the O.R.S.T.O.M. and former curator of the Museum of Tahiti and the Islands), inventoried the collections of Cherbourg (1976), those of the Military Hospital of Brest (1978) and those of the Polymathic Society of Morbihan of Vannes (1988). Then it publishes the inventories of other museums and especially that of the Polynesian collections of Lille as well as all the collections of the Muséum de Grenoble (published in 1990), and the Muséum de Perpignan (1993). She insisted, in 1986, with the Inspection des Musées de France on the need to systematically carry out these inventories. Today, it continues to play this role of reference and advice to several institutions.
The impetus of the Kanak Cultural Development Agency
At the same time, at the request of Jean-Marie Tjibaou and the Agency for the Development of Kanake Culture (A.D.C.K, Nouméa), I began in 1980 to locate the Kanak collections in Europe and Metropolitan France. The objective was not to carry out exhaustive inventories but to constitute a database of the main museums preserving this heritage. About sixty are visited. These surveys carried out between 1980 and 1990 with displacement on the place of conservation, allow in many museums to draw attention to these collections especially as the initiative and the financing, for the first time, depend on the people concerned primarily by this heritage.
This work will have for concretization two publications of the A.D.C.K: an illustrated collection Objects kanaks and a portfolio Sculpture kanake in 1984. These documents were intended to provide local information to the public of artists, craftsmen and schools on their heritage.
They will especially allow the preparation of the exhibition Jade and Mother of Pearl, Kanak Heritage, produced in Nouméa in 1990 and in Paris in 1991. The latter will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, giving pride of place to the illustration of kanak objects held by museums in the region. The exhibition of Kanak objects lent by 26 institutions in France and abroad, including 17 museums in the region, was made possible by a collaboration based on these inventories and the exploitation of this file. In any case, the original steps taken for the exhibitions are: Jade and Nacre (Kanak Heritage) » 1990 and « Ash and coral (heritage of Vanuatu) » 1996 with Christian Kaufmann of Basel , Kirk Hufmann and Ralph Regenvanu of Port Vila showed that the time had come when the indigenous peoples of the Pacific (or indigenous peoples according to the terminologies accepted in international bodies) show an increasing interest in their heritage.
This first temporary return of kanak objects «to the country» was exemplary for at least two reasons.
This exhibition was first held in New Caledonia and then in Paris, reversing traditionally well-established priorities. But above all it was done in collaboration with the Territorial Museum of New Caledonia and its curator, Emmanuel Kasarhérou. He and his team undertook a tour of preparation and presentation of the objectives of the exhibition in most localities throughout the Kanak territory: the tour lasted two months and was constantly the place of a fruitful debate on the very notion of heritage.
Secondly, it resulted in the deposit of a dozen works from the metropolitan collections completing the collections of the museum of Noumea. This type of temporary deposit of works found in the Western collections has become popular since the Tjibaou Cultural Center dedicates one of its museographic spaces: twenty objects have already made a stay of 3 years (from Australia, Switzerland, France, Germany). This operation of deposit of Kanak works in New Caledonia was followed by a deposit of the Museum of Man of an equivalent number of works.
The intervention of the Museum Inspection
In the same dynamic the support of the Inspection des Musées de France was confirmed and allowed (with Victor Beyer and Germain Viatte) to implement inventories and recollections like those that were undertaken (1992-1995) on the whole of the Nord-Nord regionPas-de-Calais, with the support of the Conservative Association, whose president, Annick Notter, undertook to show these treasures in a travelling exhibition: Oceania, curious, navigators and scientists. This exhibition project took shape after I was able to make an inventory of the Oceanian collections of the Boulogne-sur-Mer Museum.
I noticed at the time that the forgetfulness in which these collections were held was such that the rare information I had been able to gather, perhaps clumsily certainly, suggested that Boulogne held only about twenty pieces... it was revealed during the inventory 370 piled up in makeshift crates deposited in a reserve open to all the winds of Boulonnais!
Research on the history of the collection was also very rich. The collections of the museum of Boulogne-sur-Mer offer a panorama of all types of Oceanian collections that can be observed in provincial museums.
Indeed at the origin of these collections we find a cabinet of prestigious curiosities (that of Isidore Leroy-Debarde , painter of the King), then collections of navigators (in particular that of Dumont d'Urville), but also collections of conquering sailors (Dupetit-Thouars) and of course objects from the missionaries of Public Education (Maindron and Pinart) and finally from a curator (Ernest-Théodore Hamy, creator of the Trocadéro Museum).
The contribution of Sylviane Jacquemin of the National Museum of Arts of Africa and Oceania to these inventory operations was decisive. She undertook a heavy work leading to 8 exhaustive inventories by enriching it with the indispensable historical research that makes it possible to value these collections. Among other things, she helped to reassign some objects from the Dunkirk museum to the expedition of D'Entrecasteaux, most of whose pieces had disappeared after they had fallen into the hands of the English. His memoir of the Ecole du Louvre in 1991, remarkable precision but still unpublished, entitled History of the Oceanian Collections in 18th-20th century Parisian museums and establishments, allows to reconstitute the turbulent history of Parisian collections. It follows in particular the cahotic path of the collection of the Musée de Marine du Louvre which will then go to the Musée du Trocadéro then to the Museum of National Antiquities of St Germain-en-Laye, to finally be donated to the M.N.A.A.O (in 1991). Sylviane Jacquemin will ensure the complete collection collection. This work made possible the holding of the exhibition Rao-Polynésies (1992) featuring the essential pieces of this prestigious series when it arrived at the M.N.A.A.O.
The mobilization of collections managers
Among the works undertaken in recent years are the inventories of the Chartres collection made and published by H. Guiot and C.Stefani , the inventory recently undertaken by H. Guiot of the collection of the Marists in La Neylière thanks to European funds, the inventory of the collection of the Rouen Museum that I completed at the end of last year with the support of the DRAC as well as that of Puy-en-Velay.
To these various works carried out by specialists must be added the contribution of curators of museums concerned by Oceanian collections which, motivated by renovation projects of their establishment, have initiated some time ago real inventories with the help of qualified specialists. Thus Etienne Féau for the museum of Angoulême then Paul Matharan at the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux and Véronique Merlin-Anglade at the Musée de Périgueux who, at the end of their efforts, organize the exhibition Terres d'échanges, the Oceanian public collections in Aquitaine in 1998. Same thing with Elise Patole Edoumba in La Rochelle, Claude Stéfani in Rochefort, Béatrice Rollin in Angoulême, Sylviane Bonvin in Toulouse, Fabien Laty in Montpellier, Christine Athénor in Lyon or Mme Santrot with Claire Gallard at the Musée Dobrée in Nantes the completion of the inventory of Breton collections by François Coulon curator at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Rennes.
A new museography
The renovation projects initiated over the past twenty years were the best reason for this research, and the inventories carried out on their occasion reveal a renewed interest in these collections, preceding by a few years the new dynamism driven by the Musée du Quai Branly project.
Among the renovations carried out we can mention the museums of Alençon, Bordeaux Boulogne-sur-Mer, Cannes, Grenoble, Issoudun, Marseille and most recently the opening of the Museum of Rochefort; other renovations are still in progress and allow to realize as we have seen, the necessary inventory and documentation work as in Pithiviers, La Rochelle, Angoulême, Langres, Lyon, Nîmes and Toulouse.
It remains to be welcomed that the very important collections of Lille, Rouen, Le Havre, Montpellier… are now kept in good condition and hope that they will be exhibited in the near future.
Roger Boulay, Chargé de mission for Oceanian collections at the Direction des Musées de France, 2007
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