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 these i ...

located in the Champs Libres cultural centre of

Rennes Rennes (; br, Roazhon ; Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France at the confluence of the Ille and the Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department ...

, 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 language, Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, Historical region, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known ...

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 of ...

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 November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

. The museum has been located in various places over time, notably housed alongside the

Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes The Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes ( ''Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes'') is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Rennes, the capital of Brittany. Its collections range from ancient Egypt antiquities to the Modern art period and ...

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 Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also includ ...

(of ~35,000 coins, medals and tokens), ethnographic (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 Alfred Dreyfus ( , also , ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. ...

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

, 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