102 J.-A. PEMBERTON
allowing ‘French ethnographers to move an entire Ethiopian chapel inte-
rior’ into the museum), it is important to the note that the Musée de
l’Homme was conceived at the time as a counter to doctrines of racial
superiority.^64 Although the original plan had been that the museum
would be opened in 1937 to coincide with the exposition, according to
Alice L. Conklin industrial action on the part building workers at the
Chaillot site meant that its inauguration had to be delayed. When the
museum was finally inaugurated on June 21, 1938, it was amidst much
fanfare. In attendance were such dignitaries as Albert Lebrun, the presi-
dent of France; Jean Zay, the minister for education; Sarraut, who was at
the time of the museum’s inauguration the minister of the interior; and
Georges Mandel, the minister for the colonies. Writing some weeks after
the event, Jacques Millot observed that to attend the inauguration, was
to ‘find onself lost in an immense crowd’ and close to ‘Tout-Paris’. More
importantly, he went on to insist that the Musée de l’Homme was a reaf-
firmation of the right of all cultures and societies to respect however
humble they might be.^65 For Millot, who himself would later direct the
museum, the Musée de l’Homme was a powerful reassertion of human-
ism in the face of the fanatical cult of race. In this regard, he stated the
following:
At a moment when, in certain of the most powerful States of the world,
the ethnic mystique attains its apogee, and when race, having become an
idol, crushes the individual and dominates all spiritual values and morals,
the Musée de l’Homme is there in order to show to all that the apparent
diversity of human beings covers over a profound unity; that every original
culture has its value and its merits; that the most modest forms of life and
civilization are not for this reason the least respectable; that finally there is
not any race that can legitimately arrogate to itself the right to despise the
others.^66As noted, in terms of its architectural style, the Palais de Chaillot
brings together modernist, neo-classical and monumentalist elements.
(^64) Cullum, review of Paris 1937: Worlds on Exhibition, by James D. Herbert, 39.
(^65) Millot, ‘Le Musée de l’Homme,’ 687–88. On the matter of the delay in the opening
of the Musée de l’Homme and for the date on which it was finally inaugurated, see Alice
L. Conklin, In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 140, 143.
(^66) Millot, ‘Le Musée de l’Homme,’ 694.