



Bande annonce de l'exposition «Populaire ?»


As the Mucem celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2023, it's a good time to take a look back at its heart and history: its collection.
The aim of this permanent exhibition is to present the collection in all its diversity. It brings together the historical holdings of the Musée national des arts et traditions populaires, the European collections of the Musée de l’Homme and those acquired since the early 2000s, with a view to opening up to the Mediterranean and the contemporary world.
Interview with Émilie Girard, Mucem's Scientific and Collections Director
On the first floor of the building, the Mucem’s permanent exhibition is designed as a space for discovery, highlighting the profoundly human character of the objects and testimonies that make up this collection. It presents what makes up the museum’s “material”, it bears witness to the semiotic (what objects say about the society in which they were produced) and aesthetic character of this collection, and makes it possible to read all the stories that led to the acquisitions, the life paths of the objects, what motivated their entry into the museum’s reserves, then and now.
The exhibition book

This book-object, conceived in close collaboration with curators and the museum’s editorial team, offers an opportunity to delve into the Mucem’s collections and read them in a new way. Three hundred selected pieces will be presented to illustrate the collection’s pluralistic nature.
The general itinerary follows broad categories borrowed from the vocabulary of the history of arts and techniques (“painting”, “sculpture”, “metal arts”, “ceramics”, etc.). A journey that brings out the particularities of the Mucem collection, breaking with the usual hierarchy between fine art and popular art. We thus move from objects expected in a museum (such as paintings, ex-votos, icons, etc.) to more surprising items (such as decorated beehive doors), and from objects familiar to the general public to more unexpected or even mysterious items.
Alongside the 1,200 objects and documents from the Mucem’s historical collections, or those more recently acquired by the museum, an immersive digital mediation system evokes, through a selection of objects, the idea of “popular culture” that permeates its collections.
An audio tour for children

Your mission? Help Phil rediscover his emotions thanks to the objects scattered throughout the exhibition: a nine-stage journey full of surprises!
Free audio tour every day, without reservation, on presentation of a ticket (return of equipment 30 min before closing time).
Le parcours du Collectionneur
Throughout the “Populaire?” exhibition, a multi-sensory tour for the general public, accessible to the visually and mentally impaired, punctuates the visit.
It’s a sensitive, poetic device made up of 7 stations in a retro universe, inviting visitors to discover and handle the collection of a fictional character, the eccentric collector. Travel souvenirs, films, masks… as the character gleans his finds, everyone can discover or rediscover the popular imagination associated with everyday objects that have become emblematic, a sort of “Proust’s madeleines” that awaken emotions, sensations and memories.
Design and production: Chouette fluo and Esprit Volume
Popstars
As part of the Pop Stars program, the Mucem is showcasing young people from its micro-college, a structure created this year to welcome teenagers with anxiety disorders who refuse to attend school. Participants discovered the “Populaire?” exhibition, chose a striking object and expressed their emotions by writing a sensitive cartel. Photographer Hara Kaminara then photographed the youngsters and their support team.
Texts and portraits are displayed on panels that can be viewed outside the “Populaire?” exhibition until September 2025.
This is the third edition of the Pop Stars program, already run in conjunction with Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Marseille and the “C’est pas du luxe” Festival.
Donation of three costumes created for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
On July 26, 2024, the Games’ opening ceremony drew more than 300,000 spectators to Paris and broke television audience records in France. Composed of twelve tableaux, it paid tribute to French culture through cinema, literature, song and cabaret, while featuring numerous pop culture figures.
Aware of the historic nature of this event, Paris 2024, the organizing committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, has donated to the Mucem a selection of three costumes created for this opening ceremony:
– The costume of the masked Torchbearer who crossed the capital, traversing the rooftops of Paris to the forecourt of the Eiffel Tower.
– The costume of Marie-Antoinette whose decapitated head sang the revolutionary song Ah! ça ira.
– All carried by some twenty athletes and para-athletes during the final leg of the torch relay to the Olympic cauldron in the Tuileries Gardens.
The exhibition is curated by Mucem’s scientific direction and curatorial department.
Scenography: Sylvie Jodar
Graphic design: Caroline Pauchant
Lighting design: Thierry d’Oliveira Reis
As the Mucem celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2023, it's a good time to take a look back at its heart and history: its collection.

The aim of this permanent exhibition is to present the collection in all its diversity. It brings together the historical holdings of the Musée national des arts et traditions populaires, the European collections of the Musée de l’Homme and those acquired since the early 2000s, with a view to opening up to the Mediterranean and the contemporary world.

Interview with Émilie Girard, Mucem's Scientific and Collections Director

Bande annonce de l'exposition «Populaire ?»
On the first floor of the building, the Mucem’s permanent exhibition is designed as a space for discovery, highlighting the profoundly human character of the objects and testimonies that make up this collection. It presents what makes up the museum’s “material”, it bears witness to the semiotic (what objects say about the society in which they were produced) and aesthetic character of this collection, and makes it possible to read all the stories that led to the acquisitions, the life paths of the objects, what motivated their entry into the museum’s reserves, then and now.

The exhibition book

This book-object, conceived in close collaboration with curators and the museum’s editorial team, offers an opportunity to delve into the Mucem’s collections and read them in a new way. Three hundred selected pieces will be presented to illustrate the collection’s pluralistic nature.

The general itinerary follows broad categories borrowed from the vocabulary of the history of arts and techniques (“painting”, “sculpture”, “metal arts”, “ceramics”, etc.). A journey that brings out the particularities of the Mucem collection, breaking with the usual hierarchy between fine art and popular art. We thus move from objects expected in a museum (such as paintings, ex-votos, icons, etc.) to more surprising items (such as decorated beehive doors), and from objects familiar to the general public to more unexpected or even mysterious items.
Alongside the 1,200 objects and documents from the Mucem’s historical collections, or those more recently acquired by the museum, an immersive digital mediation system evokes, through a selection of objects, the idea of “popular culture” that permeates its collections.
An audio tour for children

Your mission? Help Phil rediscover his emotions thanks to the objects scattered throughout the exhibition: a nine-stage journey full of surprises!
Free audio tour every day, without reservation, on presentation of a ticket (return of equipment 30 min before closing time).
Le parcours du Collectionneur
Throughout the “Populaire?” exhibition, a multi-sensory tour for the general public, accessible to the visually and mentally impaired, punctuates the visit.
It’s a sensitive, poetic device made up of 7 stations in a retro universe, inviting visitors to discover and handle the collection of a fictional character, the eccentric collector. Travel souvenirs, films, masks… as the character gleans his finds, everyone can discover or rediscover the popular imagination associated with everyday objects that have become emblematic, a sort of “Proust’s madeleines” that awaken emotions, sensations and memories.
Design and production: Chouette fluo and Esprit Volume
Popstars
As part of the Pop Stars program, the Mucem is showcasing young people from its micro-college, a structure created this year to welcome teenagers with anxiety disorders who refuse to attend school. Participants discovered the “Populaire?” exhibition, chose a striking object and expressed their emotions by writing a sensitive cartel. Photographer Hara Kaminara then photographed the youngsters and their support team.
Texts and portraits are displayed on panels that can be viewed outside the “Populaire?” exhibition until September 2025.
This is the third edition of the Pop Stars program, already run in conjunction with Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Marseille and the “C’est pas du luxe” Festival.
Donation of three costumes created for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
On July 26, 2024, the Games’ opening ceremony drew more than 300,000 spectators to Paris and broke television audience records in France. Composed of twelve tableaux, it paid tribute to French culture through cinema, literature, song and cabaret, while featuring numerous pop culture figures.
Aware of the historic nature of this event, Paris 2024, the organizing committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, has donated to the Mucem a selection of three costumes created for this opening ceremony:
– The costume of the masked Torchbearer who crossed the capital, traversing the rooftops of Paris to the forecourt of the Eiffel Tower.
– The costume of Marie-Antoinette whose decapitated head sang the revolutionary song Ah! ça ira.
– All carried by some twenty athletes and para-athletes during the final leg of the torch relay to the Olympic cauldron in the Tuileries Gardens.