A New Century of Folk Display in France

――The Opening of a Museum for Europe and the Mediterranean――

Abstract

  This report is about the fate of a museum in France. The museum was once called the “Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions (Musée national des Arts et Traditions Populaires)”. Catering to French popular culture, this museum was opened in Paris in 1937, and was closed down in 2005. The stream of this museum is however far from finished. This is because it was reopened in 2013 at a new location; Marseille, the Mediterranean port city. The name of the museum was also changed. The museum is now known as the “Museum for Europe and the Mediterranean (Musée national des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée)”. In this report, we shall examine the vision that forms the basis of the ongoing move, in addition to studying other facets of the reorganization of the French ethnology museum from a museum of Folk Arts and Traditions, to one catering to the European and Mediterranean Civilizations. The ethnology museum for French folk culture played the role of a place that exhibits the national identity in the early stages of its foundation, exhibiting the difference and similarity across French country areas. But, at present when the globalization of culture and society is realized strongly, the framework of the exhibition also needs to be changed greatly to realign it with French ethnology. However, the problem cannot be solved only by expanding the volume of collection and frame of display in museum: How is mixture of culture and society to be considered and represented? The recent position of “French folk culture” and its social contribution will be reconsidered in conclusion.