ABSTRACT
The Muse des Civilisations de lEurope et de la Mditerrane (MuCEM) is scheduled to open in Marseille in June 2013. This new museum brings together collections from the Muse de lHomme and the Muse National des Arts et Traditions Populaires (MNATP), two major ethnographic museums that opened in Paris in 1937. The idea of a natural selection, validated by the concept of evolution, justified the classification of ethnographic artefacts with animals and other natural specimens. Ethnographic objects were seen as evidence of the gradual evolution of mankind from the state of savagery to civilisation. The transfer of the ethnographic collections from the Muse de lHomme to the quai Branly museum and the future MuCEM, as well as the closure of the MNATP, constitute a major turn in French ethnology and an irreversible transformation of the relationship between anthropology and museums.
