Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Bernard d'Agesci Museum was created by a cultural initiative of the Niort Agglomeration Community to centralize three separate collections: the Fine Arts Museum (paintings, sculptures, ceramics), the Natural History Museum (ornithology, geology) and the Education Conservatory (school objects, educational archives). This ambitious project aimed to create a multidisciplinary centre combining art, science and educational memory, complemented by spaces dedicated to temporary exhibitions, a conference room and a restoration workshop for works from the West.

The building was built in 1897 by architect Georges Lasseron in the former high school of young girls in Niort, the first of his academy. The latter incorporated unusual decorative elements for a public building, such as earthenware and terracotta ornamenting the stone façade. The institution, renamed Jean Macé High School in 1898 in tribute to the founder of the League of Education, retained its school vocation until 1993. Its reconversion into a museum was decided in 1995, with an architectural project combining the modern window of the agency Brochet-Lajus-Pueyo with the original neo-classical style.

Inaugurated in 2006, the museum now combines heritage and innovation, with infrastructures dedicated to research (special library), pedagogy (educational service) and conservation (restaurant workshop of 500 m2). Its establishment in Les Deux-Sèvres, in the heart of New Aquitaine, makes it a key player in regional cultural diffusion, labeled Musée de France and anchored in local history by its emblematic building, witness to a century and a half of education and knowledge transmission.

External links