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Origin and history

The Musée des Arts et Traditions populaires (ATP) is a French museum specializing in Provencal ethnography. It is housed in the former congregation of Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Pasteur, whose buildings date back to the 18th century, on Place Georges-Brassens in Draguignan. This place, originally a mansion (the Motte Hotel) acquired in the early 19th century by the congregation to establish a novitiate, was sold to the city in 1973. The nuns left the site in 1979, allowing it to be used as a museum between 1980 and 1983, before its inauguration in 1985.

The museum was created in the 1980s under the impetus of the association for the preservation of the Arts and Folk Traditions of Middle Provence. Its collections, which became community-based in 2007, come from local donations and trace the rural and artisanal know-how of the 19th and 20th centuries: agriculture, olive cultivation, viticulture, pastoralism, and traditional festivals. In 2009, the Community d'agglomeration dracenoise acquired the adjacent Buisson mill to extend the museum with a permanent exhibition on olive cultivation.

The site, open from Tuesday to Saturday, offers 600 m2 of exhibitions on three levels, including workshops (bouchonrie, corderie), Provencal cuisine, and agricultural machinery. A garden and an outdoor gallery complete the visit. In 2012, the museum welcomed 11,171 visitors. Since 2016, he has also organized temporary exhibitions of modern art, while maintaining his ethnographic anchor.

The history of the buildings is marked by a tragedy: their former owner, Jean Durand, was murdered with his family during the French Revolution. The congregation then set up charities there before the place became a museum. Today, the museum collaborates with the Provençal cultural centre and offers a documentary centre, an archaeology unit, and a shop valuing local products (olive oil, pottery, soaps).

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