Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn 2010

By Roger Boulay, researcher and curator of exhibitions. He is also charged with the mission for the direction of the Musées de France.

Introduction
The museums of Rochefort, La Rochelle, and Angoulême, all recently and magnificently renovated institutions located in west central France, together form a sort of “golden triangle” for aficionados of South Pacific art. The number of ethnographic objects preserved in these locations currently totals around 2,500. Of these, 1,859 are housed at La Rochelle. If one adds to these the collection of the Musée de Royan, a number of pieces at the Maison de Loti, a few important rarities at the Ecole de Santé Navale in Rochefort, and the two modest display cases at the Château de la Roche Courbon, the total climbs to around 3,000.
A particularly distinguishing aspect of these fine collections lies in their thorough historical documentation, which provides a full account of how such precious Oceanic objects came to Europe. Their provenances are as diverse as their forms and include oddities derived from eighteenth-century curiosity cabinets; pieces picked up by colonial agents; souvenirs and mementos from great maritime exploratory voyages; so-called “comparative” collections, the goal of which was to link prehistoric archaeological objects with those of “contemporary prehistoric man”; and anthropological collections of the early twentieth century. As may be expected, the names of a host of important collectors of the last three centuries are attached to many of these objects, including Bougainville, Dumont d’Urville, Duperrey, Festetics de Tolna, Loti, Ratton, Chauvet, Morris, and many others.