MUSEUM OF MAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 August 1938, Page 7

MUSEUM OF MAN

« INTERESTING FRENCH DISPLAY. One of the results of the movement in France to modernise museums is the Museum of Man, which is the Ethnographical Museum of the Trocadero brought up to date and considerably enlarged. The galleries of the Trocadero where the new museum is housed occupy more than 16,000 square yards of floor space. Steel show cases have taken the place of the old-fash-ioned wooden ones, and special lighting which can be turned on and off by the visitor shows up every object. Beside huge maps showing the peoples and their distribution throughout the world according to race and language, more than a hundred maps on the walls enable the visitor to situate exactly the exhibits shown in the cases. Only a quarter of the exhibits are shown, the remainder being in a reserve at the disposal of the student and the specialist. The first gallery shows the comparison between different races, then the different types of man, prehistoric, historic and of the present time. The inhabitants of the world passed in review, from Africa and Australia to the polar regions, and the daily life of each exemplified by utensils and tools used, costumes and ornament. A lecture hall and cinema seating 250 spectators, with a platform for demonstrations of folk dances, and a library and reading room, exist on upper floors. One large hall has been set aside for temporary , exhibitions, of which there will be an average of six a year.