Raisons et conséquences des transformations du musée Guimet dans les années 1930

« Reasons and consequences of the 1930's alterations to the Guimet Museum », by Muriel Mauriac-Le Heron. In 1878, Emile Guimet (1836-1918) created an encyclopedic Museum devoted to religions, where research and teaching were essential. But in the 1930's, the Guimet Museum knew deep changes, becoming in 1945 just a section of the Louvre Museum. The lack of any Guimet inheritor, the fastening at the National Museum Reunion (Réunion des musées nationaux) in 1927, the economic crisis which promotes a public works policy propitious to the modernisation of a grown old Museum, the will to magnify the colonial empire broadly explain these changes. The main consequence of the 1930's changes remains obviously the surrender of the original project. From a foundation wanted by a XIXth century social entrepreneur that aimed at educate through religions we pass then to a more traditional XXth century Museum, dedicated to Asiatic arts.