Museums - Musée Calvet

The African, American, Asian, and Oceanic collections of the Musée Calvet consist of some 250 objects assembled in the nineteenth century from donations and bequests. The museum's roots date to 1810, when Doctor Esprit Calvet left his curiosity cabinet, his library, and all of his money and belongings to the town of Avignon. The town then opened the museum, the holdings of which were augmented by objects seized in 1792 during the French revolution. Noteworthy in its collections are a Sapi Portuguese sculpted ivory Oliphant from Sierra Leone that was brought to France in the eighteenth century, a group of Easter Island statuettes (including a superb seventeeth or eighteenth centry moai kavakava figure), as well as an assortment of Polynesian clubs, Marquesas Islands adornments, and American Indian objects.