Musée A little bit of history about a large collection

The building was built in two steps by the Augustinians, in 1738 and 1778, in order to establish a school directed by the congregation. Later it was taken over by the municipality of Binche and housed a number of educational institutions until 1956. In 1965, the building was listed by the Royal Commission for Monuments and Sites and on 13 June 1975, the international Carnival and Mask Museum opened its doors on the initiative of Samuel Glotz, a local historian passionate about ethnology and the mayor Charles Deliège who already at the end of the 1950s had given his consent to house a museum in the building. The particularity of the institution is that, since its opening, it has dealt with carnival (that of Binche, but also that of Belgium, Europe and other continents) as a masked ritual, considering it in the same way as other masking practices of the world, no matter if they are African, Asian, Oceanian or American. As you will discover during your visit, carnival has indeed a sacred meaning and ritual roots connecting it with traditional masquerades.

The museum’s collection comprises more than 12.000 object numbers including masks, costumes, puppets, musical instruments and ritual objects from all over the world. The collection does not only relate to the « object-mask » : when speaking about masked rituals, we deal with living practices, i. e.  with intangible heritage. Hence, it is essential to put this heritage back into its context. The museum’s ethnological collections are completed by documents such as films, sound recordings, interviews etc.

Collecting and preserving the collection items as well as studying them scientifically, presenting and making them accessible to the public have always been the main objectives of the museum which, through its activities, participates in promoting and deepening the knowledge about the intangible heritage of humanity.