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ART ON VIEW 72 small part of that institution’s Asian collection remained in Lyon and Guimet continued to direct the institution that held them within the confi nes of the building. But the story doesn’t end there. In 1927, a third museum came into existence in the same building. This was the Musée Colonial de Lyon, which Édouard Herriot, the city’s mayor, had the idea for after the 1922 Exposition nationale coloniale in Marseille. This establishment presented objects that attested to the skills of the colonies’ peoples and included fi ne old artworks made for indigenous use that colonial administrators had purchased, as well as objects that had been collected, and often tastefully selected in situ, by merchants established in Africa. A group of works from Côte d’Ivoire donated in the 1930s by Louis Roux, a plantation owner at Danané in the heart of Dan territory, is just one example. It includes a number of Dan masks, including one with its fi nely plaited vegetal fi ber coiffure intact; a particularly beautiful Dan spoon; and a Senufo helmet with a fi ne female fi gure atop it, patinated with palm oil and decorated with fi ne glass bead ornaments (fi g. 12). The institution also benefi ted from an exceptional donation made by Madame Renel, whose husband, Charles Renel, had assembled a marvelous collection of Madagascan works between 1906 and 1924. Fascinated by the spiritual lives of the Madagascans, this teacher and administrator had acquired a number of ody (talismans), wooden beds, and stone lamps recently published in Bertrand Goy’s Arts Anciens de Madagascar. In 1979, one of the most unique and remarkable groups of works now in the Musée des Confl uences was given to it by the Pontifi cal Mission Societies. This collection was assembled by the OEuvre de la propagation de la foi (Association for the Propagation of the Faith), an institution closely connected with the Pontifi cal Mission Societies and founded collection substantially enriched with ethnographic objects? M. P.: Yes, but not right away. It was not until the last third of the nineteenth century that the establishment of a new academic staff led the collections to grow. Under the supervision of Louis Lortet (director from 1870 to 1909) and Ernest Chantre (associate director from 1879 to 1909), several research expeditions to the Caucasus and Egypt were organized and led to the acquisition of collections of objects from these areas. Chantre was also regularly in contact with dealers and collectors, including Émile Guimet, who in 1879 was about to open his own museum dedicated to Asian religions and decided to give our museum a group of non-Asian objects, including a beautiful Moluccan Islands shield (fi g. 4) and a New Caledonian ceremonial axe (fi g. 5), both of which are now part of the Musée des Confl uences’ permanent installation. Chantre also frequented important people in the business world, like the Gravier brothers, merchants in Gabon and organizers of human zoos who sold more than 500 West and Equatorial African objects to the museum. Around the same time, it acquired a fi ne collection of utilitarian pieces (cups, bowls, headrests) now identifi ed as Tsongan from the South African Transvaal region. These were purchased from a certain Mr. Wood, who was the agent and manager of a Zulu troupe that passed through Lyon. In 1914, the museum relocated from the Palais Saint-Pierre, which is now the home of the Musée des Beaux- Arts de Lyon, to the space that had been occupied by the Musée des Religions established by Guimet in 1879. Its collection had been moved to what is now the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet in Paris. However, in 1913, a


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