Brigitte Nicolas,
director of the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes in Lorient

Could you tell us about the musée de la Compagnie des Indes in Lorient, which you currently run?

The only one of its kind in France, the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, the art and history museum of the city of Lorient, is listed as a “Musée de France”. It is located in the citadel of Port-Louis, a military fortress overlooking the sea, built by the Spanish at the end of the 16th century and modified several times over the following two centuries. Its theme, unique in France, traces the history of the great maritime trading companies of the 17th and 18th centuries and their original ties with the town of Lorient. Models of ships, dioramas illustrating shipbuilding, life on board, the trading posts of Pondicherry and Canton, and the life of slaves on a coffee plantation in Bourbon; naval objects, paintings, non-European artefacts, porcelain and lacquerware from China, textiles from India, etc. all bear witness, for better or worse, to the commercial, political, social and cultural impact of the European maritime venture around the world in the early days of globalization.

Despite its small size, the museum is very active, often lending its collections around the world and staging its own temporary exhibitions within the permanent collection. The museum's loan and exhibition activities regularly lead to changes and upgrades in the scenography of the permanent collection, making the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes a very lively museum. An active policy of enriching the collections over the last fifteen years through the deposit and purchase of works further enhances this phenomenon. The major national museums, such as the National Museum of Asian Arts - Guimet, the musée du quai Branly - Jacques-Chirac and the Château de Versailles, are invaluable partners in this process. The acquisition budget, financed by the City of Lorient and very actively supported by the State, the region, and the department, enables new works to be added to the collections every year, some of them very beautiful, some very rare, some of them precious and even luxurious, bearing witness to a rich history of intermingling and, above all, little known to the general public. In just a few years, they have reinforced the museum's strong and unique identity.

What is your ambition for the museum? What are the main challenges facing the museum?

My ambition over the last twenty years has been to give this small museum, which was initially deprived of resources, the means to develop in terms of conservation, restoration, and the acquisition of works, as well as in terms of cultural activities and mediation. I quickly redesigned the museum's permanent exhibition to bring it into line with contemporary historiography. The challenges are mainly related to the small spaces in which the museum finds itself constrained. The setting of the citadel is sublime but does not allow the museum to expand. So, we need to find ways of continuing to revamp the exhibition to raise public awareness of the complex phenomena that accompanied the East India Companies: the slave trade, slavery, and colonisation, but also the harshness of life on board, the flow of capital, goods and people around the planet - in short, globalisation.

Could you describe your background?

After studying art history and archaeology at the University of Rennes, I began my career as a curator with the Department of Morbihan, where I held the positions of Curator of Movable Heritage and Curator of Antiquities and Works of Art for 12 years before being appointed Director of Culture. The latter post proved to be too far removed from collections for me, so I applied for the position I've now held for over 20 years! I never thought I'd stay at the head of the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes for so long, but the work is such that I've been fully occupied with it for years. It has given me much satisfaction, the most important of which is the policy of enriching the collections, which truly fascinates me. Developing a collection, even with modest means, is a challenge and an adventure that is constantly renewed and extremely gratifying. I love meeting collectors and antique dealers, the atmosphere in the auction rooms, the excitement of pre-emption procedures, the sheer adrenalin of it all. Above all, I love researching works of art, documenting them, and understanding them. The ultimate reward is watching visitors in the museum contemplate and appropriate the works, and in that I am often rewarded.