Georges-Henri Rivière (1897–1985) was a French museologist, and innovator of modern French ethnographic museology practices. Rivière studied music until 1925, when he began museum studies at the École du Louvre from which he graduated in 1928.
Confronting the memory of this event when the facts are still recent is courageous on the part of the MuCEM staff, and to confront it through examining the life of the truly remarkable man that was Georges-Henri Rivière is a wise decision.
Rivière’s (1897-1985) strength was in being and not being a “professional”. Mostly he was not a professional but instead a man with an infinitely curious mind, open to all that enriches daily life. The exhibit spotlights the influence of his uncle Henri, a Parisian artist and, for Georges-Henri, a true innovator.
He was a talented jazz pianist, voyager, ethologist, and museologist. He lived in Paris when revolutionary cultural political movements shook the entire society. Rivière was a collaborator of many journals that treated various topics, mixing art and science, philosophy and anthropology, surrealism and ethnography.