The first folklore exhibitions in museums of society

In the second part of her work, Noémie Drouguet recalls the historical heritage of the museums of society by setting out their evolution since the last century. At the end of the 19th century, the museal landscape was mainly occupied by art museums – whose overloaded presentation contributed to the sacralization of the works and the selection of visitors —, and also by natural science museums which sometimes appear like actual curiosity cabinets. This century also saw the appearance of technical museums, industry and crafts museums, standard bearers of the benefits of technological innovation. As for ethology museums, these were mainly showcases for colonialism, places where non-European peoples were stigmatised for the exaltation of European civilisation. It was in this context that the first attempts at folklore exhibitions emerged: while they worked on the same basis of accumulation and overloading as the museums cited above, their absence of ostentatious luxury aimed to enlarge the circle of potential visitors.

As an illustration of the permanence of the tradition or glorification of a particular region, these first folklore museums were designed to serve a certain ideology, sometimes for political ends: the folklore museum was designed above all as a tool for educating the people, or as the receptacle of popular knowledge that needed to be re-evaluated. Therefore, among the fifty or so active county museums in France from 1876 onwards, there were exhibitions on hygiene, agriculture, industry or commerce – reinforcing the imposition of bourgeois values behind a veneer of progressivism. Some prominent models, which were to be copied regularly, came into being at the end of the 19th century: as well as the tableaux vivants of Scandinavian rural scenes at the Nordiska Museet of Stockholm, the Museon Arlaten in France remains one of the most imitated. Inspired by the salle de France at the Trocadero museum in Paris, the latter was the first regional ethnographic museum in the French-speaking world. Born in the wake of the Universal exhibitions under the stewardship of the writer Frédéric Mistral, this museum combined costumes, furniture and tools to recreate Provencal scenes.

From the beginning of the 20^th century, many institutions modelled themselves on the example of these pioneering museums, while also introducing developments in terms of the style of exhibition. If the development of this typology (under the influence of archaeology) was marked by a more rigorous classification of collections in display windows, dioramas underwent beautiful new developments like the Musée alsacien (Alsatian museum) in Strasbourg (with its interiors  recreated after 1907). The intentions of the regional museums still bore the stamp of the will to affirm a local identity and educate the public; their proliferation in the period between wars in Germany coincided with an increasing exaltation of patriotism (and a form of radicalisation after the coming to power of the Nazi party).

In this temporal continuum, 1937 constituted a pivotal date, marked, among other things, by the creation of the Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires. Founded on the remains of the old Musée du Trocadéro (Trocadero Museum), under the instigation of George Henri Rivière, it was first designed as a museum of synthesis, illustrating the common points between the different regions of France by means of its subject classification — and no longer their particularities. As its interior design lasted for around thirty years, several temporary exhibitions followed in succession during this period and paved the way for a new museal “model”. Under the instigation of Rivière, the research function of the museum became predominant, favouring the emergence of the concept of the Musée-Laboratoire  (Lab-Museum) with a strong scientific leaning. While the significant influence of this new approach earned it the term of “school”, this was not unanimous and some institutions offered other choices – like the Musée dauphinois of in the 1970s, with its long-lasting temporary exhibitions which allowed for a large rotation of permanent collections.

The second half of the 20th century saw the emergence of new trends in the wake of the social upheaval of the 1960s; thus a “Nouvelle museologie” appeared, or ecomuseology. Behind this latter museal form (whose conceptualisation again owes a lot to Rivière) lies the idea of presenting “man in his environment, whether this be natural, industrial, and later urban, by mixing time and space, history and geography, diachronic and synchronic approaches while adopting an interdisciplinary point of view”. With this in mind, the ecomuseum developed a particular relationship with its public, and was decentralised in the territory concerned; it differed from the open air museum by the expected participation of its users at all levels of museum programming.  By attempting to reach a wider public by means of its interdisciplinary approach and to bring the institution out from within the confinement of its walls, the example of the ecomuseum illustrates very well the historical development which led to the appearance of the concept of the “museum of civilisation”. Nonetheless, this transformation remains relatively theoretical or even utopian in the case of the ecomuseum –this museal form suffering from a lack of participation on the part of the public. However, these attempts were not without consequence for the future of “classical” ethnography museums, contributing de facto to the emergence of the concept of the “museum of civilisation” at the beginning of the 1990s. This new approach – which may concern all the types of museums mentioned above – is more anchored in the regional cultural and social fabric. With the re-evaluation of the so-called “dominant” culture, the museum also tried to open up more to the public: democratization and dissemination then became the buzzwords of museal policy. Other trends have also developed in recent years such as the new importance attached to scenography, the involvement of new technologies or the multiplication of activities on the margins of temporary exhibitions — with the risk of the museum becoming similar to a “theme park”.