MUSÉE DE L’HOMME – THE LAST CHAPTER BEFORE RENEWAL

 

Before the great renovation, the Musée de l’Homme entered a strange in-between time : a museum still open to the public, but already preparing to fall silent.

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As Head of the Galleries and Exhibitions Department, I had to lead a team of sixteen through that slow departure. As resources were saved for the renovation, there was almost no budget, only the will to keep things alive a little longer, to hold on to the museum’s pulse while the walls were being emptied of their collections. We worked with what we had, in-house materials, the creativity of the team, and managed to keep exhibitions running for the visitors who still came.

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One of those exhibitions paid tribute to the Réseau du Musée de l’Homme, the group of staff who resisted the Nazi occupation during the war. It felt like closing a circle, honouring the ghosts of the museum before leaving it to others to rebuild. What could have been a quiet ending became something else: a lesson in resilience, leadership, and quiet pride.

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We kept the museum alive long enough to hand it over with dignity, and that, in itself, was a story worth telling.