The Musée d’Ethnographie of Geneva (MEG) and the Musée Barbier-Mueller have coexisted in the same city since 1977. What they have in common is the study and celebration of the creativity of cultures from the five continents. The MEG, however, is a museum of ethnography, with a great diversity of objects and documents to provide information about these cultures, whereas the Musée Barbier-Mueller is an art museum, where the most accomplished masterpieces of great artists, known or anonymous, from the most varied traditions stand side by side. Another fundamental difference is that the collections in the MEG are of very diverse provenances and have been shaped by generations of directors and curators, while the collections of the Musée Barbier-Mueller can be attributed to the eye of its founder, Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, who took on the mission of developing a collection begun by Josef Mueller in 1907. The MEG is now honoured to welcome, for the duration of the Barbier-Mueller’s anniversary events in 2017, these few pieces, some of the most important from the art museum’s Oceanic collection.

Boris Wastiau, Director of the MEG