The Mucem library: After the project stage, confronting the reality of daily use

The Mucem museum in Marseilles took over from the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, which itself grew out of the Museum of Ethnogaphy founded in the Trocadero Palace in Paris in 1879. The project – both architectural and cultural – initially granted pride of place to the library's documentary collections, but they were then moved to the Centre for Conservation and Resources at the Belle-de-Mai site rather than being housed in the principal site at the Fort Saint-Jean. The result of this was to cut the collections off from visitors to the museum, which makes little sense in terms of cultural outreach.
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