Musée de l'Homme

The Musée de l'Homme (French pronunciation: [myze də lɔm]; literally "Museum of Mankind" or "Museum of Humanity") is an anthropology museum in Paris, France. It was established in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. It is the descendant of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, founded in 1878. The Musée de l'Homme is a research center under the authority of various ministries, and it groups several entities from the CNRS. The Musée de l'Homme is one of the seven departments of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. The Musée de l'Homme occupies most of the Passy wing of the Palais de Chaillot in the 16th arrondissement. The vast majority of its collection was transferred to the Quai Branly museum.

The Musée de l'Homme has inherited items from historical collections created as early as the 16th century, from cabinets of curiosities, and the Royal Cabinet. These collections were enriched during the 19th century, and are still added to today. The aim is to gather in one site everything which defines the human being: in terms of evolution (prehistory), of unity and diversity (anthropology), and of cultural and social expression (ethnology).

The majority of the "ethnographic exhibition" from the Musée de l'Armée of the Invalides, as it was then called, is composed of dummies representing people from French colonies, along with weapons and equipment. This material was transferred to the museum in 1910 and 1917. Photos of the Moroccan population, taken by Clérambault, were also displayed there.

The Musée de l'Homme is the direct descendant of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, which was founded in the Trocadéro Palace in 1828.

In 1928, Paul Rivet became the new director of the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro. He oversaw a major modernization and reorganization project, and had the museum linked to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle.

In 1935, the Trocadéro Palace was demolished and replaced by the Palais de Chaillot, built for the 1937 World's Fair. The museum reopened in the Palais as the Musée de l'Homme.

Several members of the Musée de l'Homme, including its founder Paul Rivet, formed a resistance group during the German occupation of Paris in World War II. When Nazi tanks rolled into the city on 14 June 1940, Rivet had a French translation of Rudyard's Kipling poem If tacked to the museum's door in a gesture of defiance.

In 1996, French President Jacques Chirac announced plans to create a new museum that would combine key collections from the Musée de l'Homme and Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. Curators at the Musée de l'Homme fought vigorously to retain the collections at their museum, but were unsuccessful. These collections went to the new museum, the Musée du quai Branly, which opened in 2006.