The Evolution of Perception; La Rochelle Natural History Museum

Apart from a diverse natural history collection, the Museum's ethnology department also contains ethnographic objects from Africa and elsewhere.

"The specimens exhibited have been collected since the beginning of the nineteenth century by adventurers eager for new discoveries, and then by scientists who desired to understand these new civilizations and people who were so different from them...

These objects show the evolution of the perception of those who gathered them".

Perhaps this is the most interesting aspect of the ethnographic material: the changing perceptions of collectors and museum visitors.