Museums - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes

The museum’s ethnographic reserves stem from collection formed by the Marquis Christophe-Paul de Robien (1698–1753) and siezed during the French Revolution. Robien was President of the Parlement de Bretagne, and had assembled one of the most famous curiosity cabinets of the period. There is an important group of objects from “New France” (Canada), which includes a rare Labrador Eskimo kayak. It dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century and is one of the oldest of its type in existence. There are also a dozen African objects, including a Benin ivory trumpet and a Congo nkisi acquired in 1934, as well as some South American pieces.