The Cher Departmental Archives have gone through their own holdings to trace how the photographic portrait changed. The sequence runs from the Sand family, sat for Nadar, to the work of Marcelle Vatan, a photographer based at Sancerre. Individuals, families and groups face the lens, and what they wore and stood beside tells how people of Berry lived. Bourges holds it, inside the Bicentennial of Photography and the Year of George Sand.
Tag: museums-archives
Luigi Odorici, fondateur du musée de Dinan
The Bibliothèque municipale de Dinan gives a long run to Luigi Odorici, an Italian political refugee who settled in the town. He became its librarian, then founded the museum and kept it for close to forty years. The display gathers pieces that passed through his hands: the Portulan de Pascoal Roiz, a portrait of saint Dominique, and the first book printed in Dinan. His bequest still forms the core of the museum’s holdings, and access is free.
Les Minutes Bleues: Les Périls de la Grande Pêche
Côtes d’Armor Destination brings its Minutes Bleues to the Musée Mathurin Méheut, in the blue light of dusk. Shadow puppeteers follow the Fils de Croguennec from the Breton moors to the desolate ports of Iceland, where drowned fishermen haunt the memory. The tale is Pêcheur d’Islande, the book by Pierre Loti that Méheut illustrated; the technique belongs to Henri Rivière, the other painter in these rooms. Each spectator cuts out a paper puppet.
Visite flash: the Bretons and the stone giants
A short mediated sequence at the Musée de Préhistoire de Carnac, turning from the stones themselves to what the Bretons made of them. Between reality and imagination, the mediator shows how the megaliths have inspired artists and advertisers. The museum holds one of the richest prehistoric collections in Europe, with 3000 objects from excavations at Carnac and nearby. The alignments themselves run for 4 kilometres. No booking is needed.
Quand l’Antiquité défie vos sens, à Coriosolis
The ArchéoMusée Coriosolis opens to a small booked group at the close of the blue hour. Its three immersive rooms are met by smell, touch and sound, not by labels. Corseul was the antique capital of the Coriosolites, and the collections come from digs on that territory. A headset sets the visitor beside Lelius, a young coriosolite, at a ceremony in the great sanctuary whose ruins stand on the site.
Bling Bling: young apprentice goldsmiths in Vitré
Not everything that glitters is gold, the session starts out, yet everything here is precious. Children of four to six are taken into metal itself, through the materials and then the pieces of metalwork made from them. They go at it as apprentice goldsmiths, with the objects in front of them. The hour is led by the service patrimoine et musées of Vitré, which keeps the town’s heritage, and it is held at the Place du Château.
Des écailles, des carapaces & des hommes
The Musée de la Conserverie Le Gall turns its temporary exhibition to the world of fishing through five species: sardine, thon, maquereau, langouste and langoustine. Collections gathered with the Musée de la pêche de Concarneau trace how techniques changed and what comes next. The route runs outdoors, to the port de pêche and the théâtre de verdure. Conférences follow the species one by one, among them la langoustine, l’or rose du Pays bigouden.
Madame de Sévigné: décor workshops for children
Vitré’s heritage and museums service invites children from the age of seven into the château for a workshop on ornament. Madame de Sévigné sets the theme, and the group talks through décor, ornementation and orfèvrerie as the marquise’s own century understood them. The newly opened exhibition room supplies the examples to look at closely. Each child then draws, borrows what they like and invents an ornament of their own.
Au fil du Rhône: Montélimar and Its Heritage
Au fil du Rhône explores Montélimar’s heritage alongside that of surrounding communities in southern Drôme and Ardèche. Geological collections include rocks, minerals and fossils. Prehistoric and ancient archaeological objects appear with medieval material and coins. Models of the château de Montélimar and the Pont du Gard complement the displays, with commentary introducing the museum’s collections.