Paper short abstract:

1878, 1938, 1996-2000: like the Mayan calendar, the process of destruction/creation of an anthropological museum in France follows a sexagesimal cycle. This bumpy history is marked by successes that inevitably turn into failures due to the swift obsolescence of this kind of institution.

Paper long abstract:

Like the Mayan calendar, the process of destruction/creation of an anthropological museum in France follows a sexagesimal cycle. 1878, 1938, 1996-2000: every sixty years, a new project emerges from the ground - Musée d'ethnographie du Trocadéro, Musée de l'Homme, Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac have thus succeeded one another, capitalizing on the same public collections, each time augmented by restructuring and acquisitions of objects with a changing identity (archaeological, ethnographic, fine arts even contemporary art). This bumpy history, which sometimes stutters, is marked by successes that inevitably turn into failures, the successes of one moment regularly leading to a dead end, a scientific and ideological bankruptcy, two generations later, due to the very rapid obsolescence of this type of institution. In my paper, I shall return to the (scientific, imperial, national, cultural, geopolitical) issues that governed the existence of museums in France. Only 25 years after its conception, the Quai Branly Museum already seems threatened in its very foundations, old-fashioned. Will the 60-year cycle experience its first exception, with the acceleration of time and the challenges posed by the debate around the restitution issue initiated by President Macron?