The Ethnographic Museum in the 1920s and 1930s: conditions for development and transformation

The European Ethnographic Museum, which had existed as an independent museum since the 19th century, underwent a series of significant changes in the first decades of the 20th century. These changes occurred due to a number of circumstances, including a rethinking of the colonization policy after the First World War, the development of ethnology as a discipline, improvements in gathering ethnographic material, and the development of a particular non-European fashion, which occurred against the background of the disillusionment of artists and cultural figures in modern Western society. In this article, these processes will be examined using the development and modernization of the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris as an example. It will be shown how a new understanding of the status of ethnographic subjects affects all areas of museum activity from choosing exhibits and where they are to be kept in the museum, to presenting exhibits at expositions and demonstrating them for a wide range of visitors.