Entre refoulement et reconnaissance, occultation et exposition, comment s’est constituée, durant le XXe siècle, la collection sur la traite des Noirs au musée de Nantes

• Main Author: Bertrand Guillet
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication 2013-02-01
• Series: In Situ : Revue de Patrimoines
• Subjects: traite des Noirs; musées; Nantes; refoulement; Anneaux de la Mémoire; Histoire et Mémoire
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/insitu/10137

Through repression and recognition, concealment and exhibition the collection on the slave trade in the Museum of Nantes was created during the 20th century. The 1992 exhibition in Nantes, The Shackles of Memory marked a revival of a history purposely hidden for many decades. The presence of objects evoking the slave trade in the collections of the Museum, presented to the public, goes back way before this remarkable stake in the exhibition. Furthermore, this sometimes chaotic presence exhibited throughout the 20th century, may had had relieving effects, or was at least precursory regarding the integration of this history in the construction of Nantes’ memory. We are thus going to look at whether this subject in the museum, was either in the logic of what is so often described as the repression in Nantes, or if it had a place apart?