Musée des Cordeliers

The Musée des Cordeliers is the town museum of Saint-Jean-d'Angély in Charente-Maritime. It is a 'musée de France'. Entry has been free since 2010. It mounts a temporary exhibition each year and has a public program of events. History The Société d'archéologie for Saint-Jean-d'Angély and its region was set up in 1923. It aimed to study and safeguard all artistic and historical monuments in that region and to found a not-for-profit museum or store all objects that could not be conserved in situ. That museum was set up in 1935, named after Arthur Bonnet and housed in the former hôtel particulier of the Hausen family at the crossroads of rue Valentin and rue de Verdun. That hôtel was made a monument historique on 13 February 1942 for its roof and façade. It shows collections given by members of the Société - remains of architectural and sculptural heritage, regional archaeological finds, fine arts, decorative arts, religious art, folk art, coins and weapons. It also houses gifts and legacies to the town, such as from the Citroën expeditions. In 1997 the Société and the town council reached an agreement to create a new museum. This opened in 2003 and was made a Musée de France. It opened at the end of the complete restructuring of the former residence of the sub-prefects of the region (promoted to an arrondissement in the second half of the 19th century), which had later become a school. It is built on the site of (and named after) a former medieval Cordelier monastery. Permanent displays Citroën expeditions The ground floor has a display on the Citroën Expeditions across Africa: the First Crossing of the Sahara by car (Touggourt-Tombouctou, 1922-1923) Central Africa Expedition or 'Black Expedition' (Colomb-Béchar - Tananarive, 1924-1925) Central Asia Citroën Expedition or 'Yellow Expedition' (1931-1932) Two participants in the first two expeditions (Louis Audouin-Dubreuil from Angers, second-in-command of the expedition, and Maurice Penaud from Deux-Sèvres, chief mechanic) were contributors to the display. Nine text panels cover industrial automobile heritage, ethnography, non-European art and the history of French colonisation. It tells the beginning, the stakes and the organisation of the expeditions. A tenth eleven-metre-long panoramic painting unfolds the story of the expeditions and their meetings with Africa's indigenous peoples - maps, photo albums, annotated albums of routes. A table case of the same length shows objects collected on the expeditions. One of the objects is the 'Croissant d'argent', one of only two surviving vehicles from the first Sahara crossing by car. Drawings by Alexandre Jacovleff are also displayed inside an African-inspired hut. Decorative arts These are displayed as in a fine arts museum - a group of religious statues in stone and painted wood from the 13th to 18th centuries; a panorama of furniture style in France and the town from the 17th to 19th centuries, complemented by works of decorative art from the same eras; a section of European edged weapons and firearms from the 17th to early 19th centuries. References External links (in French) "Le réseau des musées de Nouvelle-Aquitaine". alienor.org. Retrieved 18 March 2024.