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President Francois Hollande inaugurated the Musee de l'Homme
on Thursday after the institution, which opened in 1937 on a
hill across the Seine river from the Eiffel Tower, completed a
facelift costing more than 90 million euros ($103 million).
The museum shut for renovation in 2009 as visitors numbers
dwindled following former President Jacques Chirac's decision a
few years earlier to move its ethnographic collections to the
then-new Quai Branly museum.
While the outside of the art deco building remains the same, the
museum now boasts 2,500 square meters of revamped exhibits on
the history and evolution of mankind.
A permanent exhibition focuses on three key questions, curator
Evelyne Heyer said: "Who are we? ... Where do we come from? ....
Where are we going?"
The museum has some of the largest collections of prehistoric
artifacts in the world, as well as now some newly-acquired
ethnological artifacts.
On display is a vast array of items including the skulls of a
Cro-Magnon, the first early modern human, and of French
philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes, along with a
gallery of 19th century busts representing human diversity.
The impact humans have had on their environment is shown with
examples such as a large Senegalese bus, a Mongolian hut and
modern handmade objects.
"What we would like visitors to come away with ... is that the
big questions faced by our society currently about man's
adaptation to himself are in the end questions that mankind has
faced for 10,000 years," deputy curator Jean Pierre Vigne said.
The museum opens to the public on Saturday, with free entry for
the first three days.
(Reporting by Pauline Ades-Mevel in Paris; Editing by Tom
Heneghan)
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