 Taistumanialuk, the Arctic Collections from Canada and Greenland in Nineteenth century French Museums
As early as the nineteenth century, Arctic artifacts were included in the inventories of the first French public museums. A number of them came from private curiosity cabinets, nationalized during the French Revolution. Although France has never shown any particular interest and even less territorial interest in the Arctic regions, there are nonetheless Inuit objects preserved in many French museum institutions. These collections have arrived on French soil thanks to the interest of individuals, collectors and travellers as well as exchanges with foreign institutions. In small numbers within encyclopedic museums, they were only very rarely studied, although they were regularly displayed to the public. Purchased from intermediaries and often sold under as “Eskimo” pieces, despite some notable exceptions, a large majority were recorded in the inventories without the original context appearing. It was not until the last third of the nineteenth century that artefacts reproduced in scientific journals were discovered in France, through the prism of physical anthropology and especially archaeology. The largest and most famous collection is now kept at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris, but about ten French cities also have collections from the polar regions. The majority of these objects arrived in France before the Second World War. However, it was not until the 2000s that the scope of these collections was understood throughout France, despite isolated research and specific initiatives that brought these objects to light locally. This article aims to analyse and document the nineteenth century Arctic collections in France from a historical perspective.