Americas

The Americas collection covers much of the continent's history, from the colonial period to the present day. Nearly 13,000 objects represent the cultures of the peoples of the Arctic, North America, Mesoamerica, South America and the Caribbean.

This diverse collection covers the most extensive time span of the MEG collections, spanning more than 5,000 years. Several donations of objects are at the origin of the collection, including those of Etienne-Antoine Gillet-Brez (1835-1865), Henri (1829-1905) and Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) or Georges Barbey (1886-1963). In addition to these is the important collection carried out in the Amazon between the 1950s and 1990s by René Fuerst (born 1933) and Daniel Schoepf (born 1941), both former curators at the MEG.

The department's major collections bear witness to the European colonisation of the continent, the Catholic Church in the Americas, the economy, and contemporary politics and society. Mention should be made, for example, of the vestiges of pre-Hispanic material culture (Aztec, Chimu, Inca, Moche, Mochica) as well as the material productions of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon (including the Kayapó, Karajá, Macuxi, Wayana-Apalai), Alaska, the Northwest Coast of Canada (Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian), and the southwestern United States (Hopi, Navajo, Tewa, Zuni).

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