77 FIG. 1 (left): The new MEG building. Photo: Architron, Zurich. FIG. 4: Mask, sachihongo. Mbunda, Western Province, Zambia. Early 20th century. Wood, kaolin, red patina. H: 34 cm. Acquired at a Swiss missionary sale in Geneva in 1942. MEG Inv. ETHAF 018740. the individual object became less interesting. Beginning in 1863, physician Hippolyte-Jean Gosse (1834–1901) supported acquisitions within the framework of then-prevailing modern anthropological and archeological concepts. He particularly favored the procurement of the first pre-Columbian material, which consisted of Zapotec ceramics (fig. 3). In the new MEG, the presentation of objects from this nineteenthcentury period includes Senegalese Koranic amulets, donated in 1820 by Arabic professor Jean Humbert, and a collection of late-eighteenth century Guyanese miniatures from the natural history collection of Henry-Albert Gosse (1753–1816), donated by Louis-André Gosse that same year. Other Guyanese objects were given by Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure (1767–1845). Asian armor from the Musée Historique Genevois (also known as the Salle des Armures), founded in 1870 also by Hippolyte-Jean Gosse, likewise have a place at the new MEG, as do several eighteenth-century Hawaiian tapas donated by the grandson of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. These latter were probably collected in 1778 during James Cook’s last voyage and were formerly in the collection of the Musée Archaéologique, which split from the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in 1872. Toward the end of the nineteenth century and during the first quarter of the twentieth, colonial networks developed that came to be an important source for the collections of ethnography museums, not only in Geneva but in most colonial cities. Provenances of such objects in the MEG’s collection demonstrate how important this “economy of the picturesque” became. The Musée des Missions (1876), a “museum of vanquished idols,” gave its collection to the MEG in 1901. These included a Chinese compass, donated by missionary Charles Piton (ETHAS K005049). Missionaries collected objects to produce exhibitions they deemed enlightening (such as at the Société des Missions Evangéliques), to participate in international expositions, and to organize auctions of objects to finance their “work.” One object sourced from the latter is a rare and important Mbunda mask (fig. 4), which the MEG acquired in 1942. A Ming bell (ETHAS K000631) acquired by the Musée Archaélogique from C. A. Mincieux in 1880 went to the Musée Ariana in 1884 before being transferred to the Musée d’Ethnographie. A Thai punch service (ETHAS 019965) was given as a royal gift, or phraratchathan, to the state of Geneva by Siamese King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, 1853–1910) on the occasion of his first visit to Switzerland in 1897, and it came to the MEG from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (founded in 1885). The Musée d’Ethnographie de Mon-Repos, or the Musée Ethnographique, was established in 1901 as a subsidiary of the planned Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, which opened in 1910. Physical anthropologist Eugène Pittard participated in its founding, was appointed curator in 1910, and became the institution’s director in 1922. In 1941, the museum moved into an unused school building on Carl-Vogt Boulevard. From then on, Pittard, who remained director until 1952 (then aged eighty-five), worked on developing his vision of a didactic museum based on theoretical work, in situ research, and the investigation and study of historical collections. In the twentieth
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