History

The Marseille Museums Association has been supporting Marseille museums since 1986. It was created at the request of Germain Viatte, heritage curator, when the museums were brought together under the same management and he was appointed director. Thus, like the large societies of friends of Parisian museums whose essential necessity he was able to see, the new association would be the vector of synergy as well as a relay to the public and the authorities.

Having absorbed several societies of existing friends, friends of the Museum of Fine Arts, friends of the Cantini Museum, etc. The Association for Museums of Marseille today brings together the 12 municipal museums and sets as its main objective, the implementation of the means intended for the valorization of the heritage and collections from the study to the conservation, presentation and communication.

Mission

Its mission is twofold, to quote Jean Vilar’s famous phrase “…with no other aim than to bring the greatest number to the most beautiful works”. The association strives to broaden an audience that it builds loyalty through specific cultural actions. Private tour of exhibitions often with curators, cultural day and trips accompanied by specialists selected with demand, conferences, educational days, visits to artists’ workshops. It also provides a link with the city’s other cultural institutions, theaters and other venues, festivals, by broadcasting their programming, which it sometimes collaborates with. And gets reduced rates for its members The association offers its members both a beautiful approach to museum collections, allowing them a privileged contact with conservation teams but also the lively and dynamic integration into the cultural life of their city.

At the museum, she provides caring support and remains attentive to them, eager to take charge of certain festive events, ready to bid for a work that goes on sale, to participate in the restoration or the publishing. It has been a source of considerable patronage and donation in recent decades. Most recently, the donation to the Museum of Fine Arts of a drawing by Louis Chaix, who was entrusted in the eighteenth century with the decoration of the Bastide-Borrelli, was a strong heritage gesture.

In the scientific field, the association has sponsored research on several occasions. Some say that it is the soul of museums, but let us bet that the spirit that animates it in the face of current circumstances remains resolutely optimistic and helps them to move forward.

Mr Alain Vidal-Naquet, former president of the Marseille Museum Association.