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The emergence of the Musée du quai Branly project and its inauguration in Paris in 2006 have sparked off many controversies and stimulated numerous debates about the politics of representation, the colonial heritage in museum collections, the influence of art dealers, the role of indigenous communities, but also and above all the often antagonistic relationship between ethnographic and aesthetic approaches. It is not our intention here to reopen the controversy of the origins or to settle the alternative between the End of Art and the end of museum ethnography. On the contrary, we wish to place ourselves in a historical perspective, and to take advantage of this contribution to lay down some milestones in an intellectual journey that began more than a century ago and which is still often written in the mode of discontinuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the Museum of Antiquities, a museum created during the French Revolution. The museum was housed in the French National Library in Paris, France and displayed ethnographic artifacts that had been collected throughout Europe and had been integrated into the Museum of Natural History. The transfer of artifacts and objects collected by naturalists to the Museum of Antiquities from other institutions is discussed. The author suggests that the display of these artifacts with objects from the Cabinet des Medailles was intended to offer a comparison between ancient and exotic objects.