Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens

This guide to the Musée d'Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens in Marseille starts with the building itself, a royal poorhouse ordered built in 1640 to lock away the city's beggars, before tracing three private collections that ended up inside it. It follows Pierre Guerre, who began collecting African masks and reliquary figures at age twelve, a Marseille neurologist who gathered carved skulls from Oceania and the Americas, and a filmmaker whose bequest filled a room with Mexican folk art. Notice how each collection still keeps its own room, arranged the way its collector left it.