Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The International Museum of Perfumery (MIP) in Grasse was founded by a private initiative in 1918, when François Carnot, son of President Sadi Carnot, created a museum of decorative arts including local objects such as perfumes. In 1921 Georges Vindry, appointed curator at the age of 25, began to gather machines and tools related to perfumery, despite the opposition of local industrialists fearing a trivialization of their luxurious sector. For 50 years, it formed a technical collection, while private pseudo-museums, combining attractions and perfume sales, dominated the grassian tourist landscape.

The public project took place in 1978, when the municipality purchased the former Pontevès hotel (1778), the historic headquarters of the Executive Board after the Revolution. This building, transformed into a museum, was inaugurated in 1989 after decades of tension between heritage preservation and industrial interests. Major renovations (1998, 2004–2008) expanded the site to 3,500 m2, incorporating educational spaces and a greenhouse. The MIP then became a symbol of the Brazilian industrial memory, faced with the gradual disappearance of local perfumeries, bought by international groups.

The museum organizes around five time periods (Antiquity in the contemporary era) and highlights 50,000 objects: bottles, posters, machines, and raw materials such as roses of May or jasmine. Its gardens, located in Mouans-Sartoux and opened in 2013, house 700 plant species with perfume, labeled "Remarkable Garden" in 2022. The MIP collaborates with institutions such as the Osmothèque or ISIPCA, while navigating between two missions: preserving the technical heritage (factories, tools) and promoting the glamorous image of perfumes, reflecting the marketing strategies of large houses.

The registration of Fatsois know-how at UNESCO in 2018 enshrines the museum as a key player in local heritage. However, recent redevelopments (2018–2019) have reduced the space dedicated to industrial machines to the benefit of exhibitions on bottles and advertisements, illustrating a tension between objective history and idealized narrative. Funded in part by associations like ARMIP, the MIP remains a living place, between worker memory and celebration of timeless luxury.

The building itself combines several periods: a 14th century wall on the north side, a 19th century facade inherited from the Hugues Aîné perfumery, and revolutionary frescoes classified in the salons of the Pontevès hotel. The latter, confiscated in 1793 as national property, was in turn administrative headquarters, olive oil factory (1802), then museum. Today, the MIP presents itself as a unique "place of memory", where contemporary art dialogues with historical collections, while questioning the stakes of industrial museum work.

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