Lo bello y lo útil, el esteta y el etnógrafo: El caso del Museo Etnográfico de Trocadero y del Museo del Hombre (1928-1940)

Abstract

The complex relationship between art and ethnography has been a major issue in France since the mid 1990s because of the launchof the Quai Branly Museum project, which rekindled heated debates about the respective interest and value of the ethnographic gaze compared to the artistic one regarding non-Western objects. This paper gives some historical depth to this topic by examining events in Paris' Ethnographic Museum of Trocadero and the Museum of Man under the direction of Paul Rivet and then Georges Henri Rivière in the 1930s.