It is a place rich in history, which has seen the greatest specialists in the human race, from Claude Lévi-Strauss to André Leroi-Gourhan, prehistorian having jostled the methods of archaeological excavations. The Museum of Man, component of the prestigious National Museum of Natural History (MNHN), has since created in 1937 a key player in knowledge and its dissemination, which employs 150 teacher-researchers in prehistory, ethnology or anthropology biological . So when the scientific institution has established a partnership with the women’s magazine SHEand was renamed for the occasion “Museum of Women” on December 11, 12 and 13, several researchers were strangled.
“This change of name, large in large from the entrance to the museum, is a misinterpretation. It gives the impression that we do gender or sexist job, while man, with a great H, designates the whole of The human species present and passed studied in these walls, “explains Arnaud Hurel, historian and research engineer at the MNHN. But the most serious, according to him, lies in the content of these three evenings: alongside make -up and bodybuilding workshops of the perineum, the public attended conferences of a “spiritual coach and master Reiki”, an alternative medicine never Scientifically demonstrated, or an astrologer, a pseudoscience very popular with the female press, but not without danger.
Very quickly, the staff unions, who discovered programming late, condemned this “worldly event, without consultation or transparency”. By organizing it, “the management of the Museum of Man goes against one of the cardinal values of the Museum: scientificity”, they denounce in a press release. Because the establishment’s ethics advisory committee is clear: the latter “cannot take on, neither promote nor associate with pseudoscientific, spiritualist, religious or sectarian speeches when they try to rule on the real world “, can we read in a charter dedicated to partnerships.
With L’Express, Jérôme Gestin, deputy director general of the MNHN, recognizes that these conferences have “escaped” his vigilance. “If we had known it before, we would have had a discussion with SHE To tell them that this did not correspond to our line, “he said. Emeline Parent, director general delegated to museums, also recalls that” some researchers had initially been approached to participate in this partnership “, without it being Finally, realized. ” SHE had contacted me to make a conference on a subject of my choice, in connection with women, confirms Samuel Pavard, demographer and professor at the MNHN. I had offered to talk about the evolution of obstetrics and how it was translated today, with the strong maternal mortality which still exists in a part of the world. According to the magazine, it was too “sad”, and I was never relaunched, “he said. Questioned by L’Express, SHE did not wish to react.
A quest for profitability
At the Musée de l’Homme, these events are not new, and are part of a “resource development” policy, concedes Jérôme Gestin. Because the MNHN, despite its 24 million euros in attendance revenue and significant state subsidies, has been in deficit for two years. In the case of partnership with SHEhowever, the counterpart was not financial: the magazine was able to benefit from the free premises – technical costs except -, in exchange forA laudatory portrait From the director of the Museum of Man published in their columns – “5 keys to find her place as a leader woman” -, to which will soon be added those of researchers from the institution, promises Emeline Parent. “This allows us to have visibility and seek different audiences,” said the two leaders.
The case could lend to smile, but it illustrates all the difficulty, for the venerable institution, to open up to a wider audience and to find new resources, without denying its foundations and the place of science, its reason for ‘be. What generate recurring tensions. Let’s move on to small daily tensions – these workspaces often not very accessible to researchers, because it is rented by companies or for private events. The first lifting of shields arrived with these night walks in the Jardin des Plantes, in the middle of illuminated sculptures of missing animals, offered since 2018 to the Parisian public. A popular success … which scandalized part of the researchers of the house. “We believed in an amusement park. Not only was no scientist to contribute to it, but there were above all aberrations, like mammoths which rubbed shoulders with tyrannosaurs, while these two species never coexisted ! “Was a teacher-researcher.
On April 16, 2019, during a meeting with the management of the MNHN, an elected union elected also deplores that scientific discourse is “close to nothing with this event”, and is concerned about the lack of impact study on The well-being of the animals present in “La Mécanagerie”, a space in the garden of the plants by which the exhibition passes. The flamingos, in the midst of gestation, gave birth two months before their end, and the trainers did not want the route to be maintained at this place. However, one of the directors of the Museum Elected: “This event has a number of positive points, including in terms of revenue for the establishment.”
A knowledge dissemination mission
The researchers did not give up putting pressure on, and the management ended up backing up: in addition to making a diagnosis on men’s animals, the illuminations, which are in their sixth edition, now associate “completely” Museum scientists, reassures Gaël Clément, professor of paleontology, three times commissioner of the event. Denis Audo, specialist in fossil aquatic arthropods, supports: “The artists in charge of light structures asked me to choose crustacean species to represent, and I participated in the writing of texts to explain their specificities to the public. “” “What is a shame is that management did not consult us before the start of the project. It often tends to forget that we also have a mission of disseminating knowledge,” summarizes a researcher.
Like this day when she proposed to Philippe Charlier, a doctor-anthropologist outside the establishment and whose work on the identification of the skull of Henri IV is contestedto become a scientific commissioner of an exhibition on mummies … even though several researchers from the Museum are specialists in the subject. Very angry, they still forced the direction to backtrack. But another exhibition being validated, devoted to photographs of Nikos Aliagas, the animator of the Star Academy on TF1, again arouses misunderstanding. “Aesthetically, what he does is rather pretty. But don’t ask me what it has to do with the Museum of Man”, quips a scientist, who sees it “a strategy to attract the general public”. Emeline Parent, Director General Delegated to Museums, denies it: “The idea of the project does not come from a researcher, it is true. But his work of photography was recognized by other institutions, and we think With the programming committee, of course, to tear it to ethnology or cultural anthropology. “
A very artistic exhibition
Even when the researchers are associated upstream of an exhibition, the situation is not necessarily better. Four scientists, who worked on Migrations, a human odyssey, An exhibition in progress at the Museum of Man, have a bad memory of it. Originally, the exhibition project manager asked them for a synopsis to describe in a video the trips of Homo Sapiens, 200,000 years ago. Without news then for nine months, they will eventually receive an already finalized film filled with errors, like this passage where the designers confused Sapiens and Neanderthal, two different species. A postdoctorate, first mobilized to highlight Polynesian migrations – its subject of thesis – has seen its work … deleted. “We were able to correct the video in extremis, a few days before the start of the exhibition. But that gave us the impression of not being considered at all,” breathes a member of the team. This debate, “not new” for Antoine Balzeau, director of research at the MNHN, however redoubled with the recruitment of “designers of exhibitions with a rather junior profile, from their majority from the art environment”, it decrypts he.
The final form of Migration, a human odyssey Witness: only a third of the exhibition is devoted to the work of paleoanthropologists and geneticists, the rest being made up of works of art and testimonies of migrants. “Isn’t this exhibition more suitable for the museum in the history of immigration?” Asks a museum researcher. Jérôme Gestin, Deputy Managing Director of the MNHN, relativizes. “We are conducting exhibitions as projects, with validation committees. It has very rarely happened that problems of this type have been raised, he stresses. Most of the time, there is a constant dialogue between the museological teams and the scientific police station. “
Researchers invited to silence
Even more surprising, on January 30, 2024, the Museum of Man welcomed a seminar co-organized by Klara Boyer-Rossol, a historian from Africa convinced for several years that the skull of a Malagasy king could be present in the museum . In the presssome of his arguments surprise by their esotericism: “The royal possessed [du peuple qui le réclame] Affirm that the spirits have designated him as that of the king, “she said, for example.” Not only is this discourse not scientific, but he mainly contradicts our work. In 2018, DNA analyzes by researchers from the museum had shown that we could not attest to it! “Rectifies an MNHN teacher, who recalls that the establishment had also prohibited his scientists from expressing himself on the subject, for diplomatic reasons.
Questioned a few days before the conference, during a social committee of administration, the presidency of the MNHn saw no problem there: “We are a hospital house, and can quite welcome a scientific meeting, even if it is co-organized by a researcher who is not an employee of a public research establishment “, can be read in the minutes, which L’Express consulted. Regarding the request for the restitution of human remains by the Malagasy state, “the Museum will make a scientific opinion, but the final decision will be taken by the French State,” she said. Listening to such an answer, a teacher-researcher is sorry: “Basically, does science still have a voice to bring to the museum of man?”
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