ABSTRACT
The Musee des Monuments francais was constructed through the coalescence of history, objects and language. Objects introduced a material, temporal, and spatial dimension. By considering these elements in Lenoir's work, this chapter seeks to unravel Alexandre Lenoir's production of narrative and its meaning for the public. Seeking a modern origin for practices that have resulted in the present-day museum trend of creating narrative templates and simulated experiences, the chapter explores the formation of the narrative history museum in the late eighteenth century. Part monument to French accomplishment, part mythic narrative, Lenoir's project was an embodiment of Enlightenment ideals in its deliberate attempt to provide moral and didactic instruction to its visiting publics through the sequencing of objects in choreographed spaces. If 'the ruin is a dialogue between an incomplete reality and the imagination of the spectator', Lenoir's anti-ruins sought the opposite: to establish a sense of completion and wholeness on a post-Revolution, fractured French psyche.
