Exkursion nach Neuchâtel

Musée d’Ethnographie du Neuchatel, Vorbereitung der Ausstellung: L’effet d’un regard: Aimé Humbert et “Le Japon illustré”

The Swiss “Ethnography Museum of Neuchâtel” will honor the 150th anniversary of Swiss-Japanese relations in 2014 by a celebration of the Aimé Humbert Collection. Humbert played a crucial role in the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce between the two countries signed in February 1864. The paintings, photographs and other documents collected by Humbert are witnesses to the way westerners looked at a land they had just barely discovered, but also to how the Japanese saw themselves.

The museum wishes to call attention to and celebrate this collection on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce between Switzerland and Japan – signed on February 6, 1864. In 2014 and 2015, the MEN plans to exhibit an important part of this collection, of which very few documents have been shown to date.

In order to prepare for this exhibition and the richly illustrated accompanying publication, the MEN will work in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Visual Sources of the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo as well as with the History Institute of the University of Neuchâtel and the East Asian Art History Section of the University of Zurich.