Museums - Musée d'Histoire Naturelle et de Préhistoire, Nîmes

Founded in 1895, the museum has retained its colonial-period display cases for the presentation of its ethnographic collection, and as such illustrates the colonial perceptions and mindset of the 1930s with regard to “exotic” cultures. The first Oceanic objects, among which are a group of Tahitian tapas, came to the museum through the gift of Edouard Jaulmes, a civil servant in Tahiti at the end of the nineteenth century. Highlights of the African collection include a necklace of King Makoko of the Congo, a group of statues from Gabon, masks of the Glozel collection, musical instruments from the Ramel donation, and important Madagascar funerary material from the Maurein donation. The museum also houses several enigmatic and fascinating monoliths dating to the Neolithic Era.