- Georges Henri Rivière
Georges-Henri Rivière (1897–1985) was a French
museologist , andinnovator of modern Frenchethnographic museology practices.Rivière studied
music until 1925, when he beganmuseum studies at theEcole du Louvre , from which he graduated in 1928. During the following years, he cared for theD. David-Weill collection, which included Chinese porcelains, Greek and Roman antiquities, and European decorative arts and paintings. In 1928, Rivière curated his first show of ancient American art at theMusée des arts décoratifs and joinedPaul Rivet as his vice-director to begin the renovation of the dustyMusée du Trocadéro , which was reintroduced to the public as a fully modernizedMusée de l’homme in 1938.In 1929 and 1930, Rivière was on the editorial board of "Documents", to which he also contributed articles, such as “The Ethnographical museum of the Trocadéro" (1929, issue 1), as well as chronicles on popular culture such as “Religion and ‘Folies-Bergère’” (1930, issue 4), and profiles on jazz musicians such as
Eddie South andHayman Swayze . During the thirties, Rivière financed ambitious research projects such as theDakar-Djibouti mission , headed byMarcel Griaule , and theSahara-Soudan mission , which provided in-depth research and enough material for over seventy ethnographic exhibitions between 1928 and 1937.That year, he launched the
Musée national des arts et traditions populaires , also based on the "Trocadéro museum"’s ethnographic collections. Oriented toward public education, its collection and exhibitions programme first focused on popular traditional art forms before dedicating itself to science and research with the introduction of theCentre d’Ethnologie Française , inaugurated shortly after theSecond World War . Between 1948 and 1965, Georges-Henri Rivière served as the first acting director of ICOM, theInternational Council of Museums , to which he returned as Permanent Advisor in 1968.Widely credited for introducing the concept of the
ecomuseum , which attempts to portray civilizations in their natural environments, he was one of the most highly esteemed museological entrepreneurs in modern France. The review "Museum" dedicated an entire issue to ecomuseums (No. 148, 1985), and included an article by Georges-Henri Rivière titled, "The ecomuseum, an evolutive definition". "La muséologie selon Georges-Henri Rivière ", was published posthumously in 1989.Works
* "La muséologie selon Georges-Henri Rivière" (1989)
Articles
* Isac Chiva, "George-Henri Rivière: un demi-siècle d'ethnologie de la France", Terrain, Numéro 5 — Identité culturelle et appartenance régionale (Octobre 1985), put online 17 July 2005 [http://terrain.revues.org/document2887.html] (in French)
External links
* [http://www.quaibranly.fr Musée du Quai Branly]
* [http://www.musee-atp.fr Musée national des Arts et Traditions Populaires] (in French)ources
French Ministry of Culture
* [http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/atp/mnatp/francais/histoi12.htm] (in French)* Definition of the ecomuseum according to Georges-Henri Rivière (1976) [http://www.ecomusee-creusot-montceau.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=39] (in French)
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