Museum of Man and research center on past and future

Museum of Man: a Museum-Laboratory

The new Museum of Man inaugurated on October 15, 2015, remains faithful to the initial project of Paul Rivet, its founder, since, in the same building, the Passy wing of the Palais de Chaillot, it combines, like the Cité de l'architecture located in the other wing, research, and teaching center and a museum, comprising:

• a permanent interactive discovery tour (permanent exhibition) and temporary exhibitions (one per year on a given theme) ;
• two scientific departments of the Museum: "Prehistory and Men", "Nature and Society";
  teaching activities;
• a research library, partly transferred to the Musée du Quai Branly, which remains a place of research in the field of human sciences. It offers the public direct access to "science in the making" through direct contact with the community of scientists and researchers.

The Museum of Man in the Passy wing of the Palais de Chaillot

Located in the Passy wing of the Palais de Chaillot, the museum takes a fascinating and enlightening look at ourselves, our history, and our future.

The 2,500 m² of the spectacular Galerie de l'Homme, the heart of the museum, showcases the permanent collections - among the richest in the world in the field of anthropology and paleontology.

The icing on the cake: you can't leave without admiring the Davioud glass roof, a vestige of the old palace built in 1878, and the magnificent view of
the Trocadero Gardens and the Eiffel Tower

Collections of the Museum of Man

The Musée de l'Homme holds a national collection of anthropology and prehistory that is unique in the world. It bears witness to the emergence and development of the human sciences in the 19th century, with a wealth of outstanding specimens relating to the origins of our species or the implementation of the first symbolic behaviors, and is still the basis of current research.

The collections of the Musée de l'Homme are among the richest in the world in their field. They include :

700,000 prehistoric pieces of great geographical and chronological diversity;
100,000 ethnobiological pieces covering man's relations with the animal and plant worlds;
30,000 anthropological pieces, specimens, and representations of the human body testifying to the diversity and unity of modern man;
6,000 ethnological pieces illustrating the appropriation of nature by human societies, since most of this section was transferred to the Musée du Quai Branly.

They are classified in

• Anatomy
• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Fossils
• History
• Minerals
• Prehistory
• Natural Sciences
• Skeletons

The exhibition part of the Museum of Man

The Museum of Man offers a large permanent exhibition, the Galerie de l'Homme, on about 2500 m2, structured in three parts:

• Who are we?
• Where do we come from?
• Where are we going?

The first part questions the identity of Man, as a homogeneous species resulting from an evolutionary bush, having developed a great diversity of ways of life and social organization, under the influence of varied environments.

The second part is devoted to the historical emergence of the human species, from the first fossils accepted as part of human history (a little less than ten million years), to the Neolithic period when Man began to domesticate his environment.

The third part shows how this new relationship of the human species to nature has evolved as a result of the exponential increase in human demography from the 19th century onwards and poses the questions that the human species is facing in its current situation and its near future.

The museum also presents an annual temporary exhibition on social issues related to Man, his origins, and his future. The reopening temporary exhibition, "Chronicles of a Renaissance", was designed to accompany the public in its discovery of the new museum and behind the scenes of its renovation.

The "Neanderthal, the exhibition" has been scheduled from March 28, 2018, to January 7, 2019.

The "I eat therefore I Am" exhibition was open from October 16, 2019, to August 31, 2020.

Scientific research at the Musée de l'homme

Identified since its creation in 1937 as a place of reference on the history of Man, the Musée de l'Homme relies on teams of researchers in anthropology, genetics, prehistory, and ethnology of international standing who work precisely on these subjects by favoring cross-disciplinary as well as chronological approaches.

On the last two levels, along with the research library, the new laboratories of the Center o Research on the evolution of Man and societies constitute a group of 115 offices in a single block that accommodates 150 researchers. They are equipped for :

• genetic analysis of modern and ancient DNA ;
• dating and characterization of archaeological materials;
• the acquisition and analysis of imaging data and 2D/3D modeling of human and faunal remains, lithic or symbolic pieces (ornaments and art objects);
• the coding of musical and video repertoires.

Adopting a resolutely multidisciplinary approach to Man that is original among European museums, the new Musée de l'Homme reaffirms its founding concept of a museum-laboratory, at the crossroads of the natural sciences and the humanities, aiming to restore to the public-citizens the results of research in progress at the heart of the institution.

Administrative and academic organization

As a research organization under the joint supervision of the Ministry of National Education, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, the Musée de l'Homme grouped together three laboratories of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle until the 2001 reform:

• the Biological Anthropology,
• Prehistory
• and Ethnology laboratories.

Since then, new research units have been developed in the Prehistory and Men, Nature, and Society departments, as well as laboratories for analysis of human genetics or mineralogy (characterization of prehistoric lithic materials).

The main themes are the adaptation of the human species to its environments, prehistory in the world, cave art, biological anthropology, and human ecology, human population genetics and settlement history, and cultural adaptation to the environment.

The Centre de Recherche sur l'Evolution Humaine (Research Center on Human Evolution) is the expression of the four vocations of the National Museum of Natural History: conservation of collections, fundamental research, higher education, and dissemination of knowledge. It brings together several CNRS mixed units and offers graduate and post-graduate training in the framework of the Master's degree and the Doctoral School of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.