The museum of civilisation, an institution with many faces

As shown in the previous paragraphs, the concept of the “museum of civilisation” can bring together a large variety of museal forms which have specific missions and objectives — detailed in the third and fourth chapters of the work. During recent decades, the museal sector has undergone an in-depth analysis, characterised by the will to keep pace with the transformations of contemporary society. As indicated earlier, this “crisis” is accompanied by a change in the terminology, the term “museum of civilisation” progressively replacing that of “ethnographic museum”. This transition is not merely anecdotal because it suggests the growing importance of the object of the museum – society – to the detriment of the disciplinary filiation which prevailed until then.

Far from constituting a category with restricted limits, this new terminology covers a large set of museal institutions causing its definition to be somewhat blurred. During the conference Museums and Societies in 1991 — which constituted the founding moment for the museum of civilisation as a new museal category – the latter was defined as a conservatory of “collections composed of objects and documents bearing witness to the evolution of mankind and society”. Presenting the museum of civilisation as a sort of “super category” (excluding museums of fine art or natural sciences), this definition has many grey areas: in addition to the floating status of archaeological museums, the so-called essential role of collection is emphasised – while in the case of museums of society this is often relegated to second place for the benefit of the public and ideas.

The complexity of the “museum of civilisation” approach nonetheless responds to new directions taken by different museal institutions. Therefore national ethnographic museums are leaning more and more towards contemporary subjects which revolve around the collective identity and “living together”. In the case of regional or local ethnographic museums however, the redefinition of their project involves dispensing with the presentation of the autarchic model which is the rural model, to study the interbreeding and transformations of contemporary society. The development of the museum of civilisation also coincides with the development of thematic museums like the wine and wine-making museum in Beaune or the cutlery museum in Thiers. The museums of society also bring together interpretation centres. Information centres in natural parks have become a kind of museum in their own right over the last twenty years and are to be distinguished from “traditional” museums by means of a didactic approach which takes into account the prerequisite knowledge and perceptions of visitors, and where the collections become secondary. Other museal forms, such as open-air museums – property collections in uncovered spaces -, ecomuseums, science and technology museums or museums of history, archaeology and civilisation can also claim to belong to the larger family of museums of society.  

The term “museum of civilisation” is therefore all-encompassing and is applicable to “any institution driven by the desire to take a plural and contemporary view of society without any disciplinary or formal distinction”. However, museums of society do not constitute a group of actors with rigorously identical choices and numerous tensions exist in this area of museology. They are particularly crystallised around certain problems, like the question of identity: on further examination, the museum of civilisation is no longer (merely) an ode to nationalism, but is directly linked to the theme of cultural diversity. In contrast with certain “old-style” ethnographic museums that are fixed in time, other museums of society question the place of history and memory through the prism of current events. Finally, museums of society also lean towards the status of the exposed objects, especially in the case of contemporary objects: indeed, how is it possible to organise the collection and exhibition of objects from which we have no detachment? These different divergent points recall the gap that exists between the conceptualisation of the museum of civilisation and its implementation in the field: the latter involves an effort of adaptation, often progressive, which not all museums are ready to sign up to.