The Brittany Museum () is a social

history museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

located in the Champs Libres cultural centre of Rennes, France. Originally structured as an archeology and ethnology museum, it is now a museum regional history and society – focusing on the conservation, study, and presentation of the history of

Brittany Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period ...

and Breton heritage from

prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use ...

to the present day. The provenance of the first items in the collections are from confiscations in 1794 during the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...

. The museum has been located in various places over time, notably housed alongside the Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes since 1815 in what was later named the

Palais universitaire de Rennes Palais () may refer to: * Dance hall, popularly a ''palais de danse'', in the 1950s and 1960s in the UK * ''Palais'', French for palace ** Grand Palais, the Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées **Petit Palais, an art museum in Paris * Palais River in ...

. it moved to its present site in 2006.

Collection

The current collection consists of over 600,000 objects and documents, of which more than 400,000 are photographic negatives and prints. The collections are co-managed with the local

ecomuseum An ecomuseum is a museum focused on the identity of a place, largely based on local participation and aiming to enhance the welfare and development of local community, local communities. Ecomuseums originated in France, the concept being develope ...

– the Écomusée de la Bintinais. Notable permanent collections include numismatic (of ~35,000 coins, medals and tokens),

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

(particularly featuring clothes and furniture), and printed works (drawings, prints, posters, maps and plans, postcards, prints and photographs - building on the foundational collection of the Christophe-Paul de Robien). The museum also houses a substantial collection of works related to Alfred Dreyfus and his 1899 trial (known as the

Dreyfus affair The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...

) – which was held in the nearby Lycée de Rennes (now the

Lycée Émile-Zola de Rennes In France, secondary education is in two stages: * ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15. * ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between ...

). Following a temporary exhibition in 1973, Jeanne Lévy, daughter of Alfred Dreyfus, made a large donation which was subsequently increased by other family-donations and purchases. The collection now includes 6,800 items including significant amounts of personal correspondence.

References

External links

Official websiteCollection database records
of the French ministry of culture
Rennes Tourism
museum information page {{France-museum-stub Museums in France Rennes Dreyfus affair Ethnographic museums in France History museums in France