Museums in Postcolonial Europe by Dominic Thomas

Museums in Postcolonial Europe by Dominic Thomas

Author:Dominic Thomas [Thomas, Dominic]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317987741
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2013-09-13T00:00:00+00:00


Figure 4. Depicting life in the colonies.

a child counted for little. Thus, we found the vestiges of an old civilization with outdated beliefs … how much work we have accomplished. (cited in Evans 2000, p. 19)

On the lateral façade of MPC are also inscribed the names of famous men who participated in establishing the French colonial empire. This inscription highlights the figures throughout French colonial history that are also the main characters of the narrative on display inside the museum. At a time when public imagination of empire was in deep crisis, inscription of colonial military officers' name on the bas-relief was intended to instill and inspire confidence about the durability of the French colonial empire to a wary public.

The interior of the museum was divided into four floors: the basement, ground floor, mezzanine and second floor. On the ground floor was the Salle des Fétes, a large hall decorated with sumptuous frescos glorifying the empire. It is in this hall that the Exposition Coloniale International officially opened on 6 May 1931 with invited dignitaries attending. Among the dignitaries who assembled for this colonial extravaganza, Prince Lanza di Scalea, the Minister of Colonies of Fascist Italy, summed up the enthusiasm of those gathered for this occasion. He noted with great satisfaction how the ‘Homeric Odyssey of the white race, which, having how reached every corner of the world, has transformed, or is in the process of transforming, barbaric continents into civilized regions’ (Lebovics 1992, p. 64). His sentiments were

Figure 5. Young African women collecting cocoa.



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