Museums - Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch

This museum recently devoted two new exhibition spaces to non-European art. They feature African and Oceanic objects given by Fred and Cécile Deux as well as objects from the congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. This organization, founded in 1881 in Issoudun by Father Jules Chevalier, sent missionaries all over the world, but particularly to Papua New Guinea. Objects brought to Europe through the middle of the twentieth century compose this collection, which is quite unique in its field. It includes ornaments, sculptures, shells and utilitarian objects, as well as bird specimens and late nineteenth century photographs. The Fred and Cécile Deux collection, consisting of eighty pieces from Africa, Oceania, and Asia, is emblematic of the interest that contemporary artists, particularly those of the surrealist movement, had in the non-European arts. It includes two very rare pieces: a Lula mask from the Congo and a New Ireland Malanggan.