MuCEM was born from the transformation of the National Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions (MNATP), founded in 1937. The ethnology of France was at the centre of the institution’s collections and research activities, whose origins date back to the creation of a “salle de France” at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris in 1884.
MuCEM’s disciplinary field now extends to all human sciences. Located in Marseille, the museum focuses on the cultures of the Mediterranean region, shared by Europe and other continents. Its collections, heirs to those of the Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires and the Musée de l’Homme, have therefore been supplemented since the 2000s by the acquisition of a large number of pieces from North Africa and the Middle East. They include more than 250,000 objects, 130,000 paintings, drawings, prints and posters, 450,000 photographs, 140,000 postcards, 150,000 books and magazines and several hundred linear metres of paper, sound and audiovisual archives.
MuCEM Documentation Centre
All documents and archives held at MuCEM can be consulted by all, at the Conservation and Resources Centre (CCR). Much of this funding comes from MNATP. With 150,000 documents on France, Europe and the Mediterranean, the library specializes in human sciences and ethnology. In particular, it holds an important collection of popular impressions from the 17th and 18th centuries.
As part of the BEROSE programme, MuCEM has made it possible to digitize rare and difficult-to-access journals: the Revue des Traditions populaires, Mélusine, La Tradition, and the Almanach des Traditions populaires. Nearly 30,000 pages, digitised by the BNF, can now be consulted in the encyclopaedia’s documentary files and digital library.
– Adress:
MuCEM – Centre de Conservation et de Ressources (CCR)
1, rue Clovis Hugues
13003 Marseille
– Website: http://www.mucem.org/fr
– Contact: Bénédicte Rolland-Villemot - benedicte.rolland-villemot [at] culture.gouv.fr
Source
— MuCEM website (visited on 16/04/2015).