La collection Campana au musée Napoléon III et la question de l’appropriation des modèles pour les musées d’art industriel

Abstract

In 1861 France purchased part of the Campana collection with a view to founding a museum for the decorative and industrial arts capable of rivalling similar institutions in Europe. The collection was presented to the public in an ephemeral “Musée Napoléon III” for a few months in 1862. But there was no consensus on the location of the collection in the French and Parisian museum landscape being elaborated: should the Musée Napoléon III be made an autonomous institution and should it be given missions similar to the South Kensington Museum in London? Or should it be made part of the Louvre, and thus add to its collections of masterpieces? Press articles and caustic publications punctuated the debate. The partisans of the first solution hoped that Paris could endow itself with a museum of industrial arts that would stimulate the French economy, while the partisans of the second solution, who won the day, wanted to reinforce the universal museum that was the Louvre.

Keywords

• Campana collection
• musée Napoléon III
• museum of industrial art
• industrial arts
• decorative arts
• Palais de l’industrie