Museums - Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, Lille

The Musée d’Histoire Naturelle de Lille is the repository for the town’s zoological, geological, industrial and commercial, and ethnographic collections. There are some 6,700 ethnographic objects—1,760 from Africa, 2,010 from Asia, 1,380 from Oceania, 780 from the Americas, and 770 from Europe. They were initially housed at the Musée d’Ethnographie de Lille, which was partially destroyed by fire in 1888. They were stored for 102 years in the Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille, before joining the collection of the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in 1990. The objects were given by various donors—including Alphonse Loillet (Oceania, 1851), Charles Phalempin (Melanesia, 1921), General Faidherbe (Africa)—and the museum has pursued an aggressive acquisitions policy through purchases as well as gifts. The collection features objects of great rarity and quality, some of which are unique. These include a Tahitian mourning costume, a Hawaiian cape collected by Captain Cook, three to’o sacred Polynesian woven fiber effigies, a Maori funerary canoe, a Marquesas Islands trophy head, a remarkable Benin ivory vase, and American Indian wampum beads and hide paintings.