On 24 March 2010, at the Musée du Quai Branly, Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, a tireless promoter of non-European cultures, officially announced the launch of the Fondation Culturelle Musée Barbier-Mueller in front of an audience of journalists and numerous guests.
He was surrounded by the seven members of the foundation’s governing body and the fifteen members of its scientific committee, who had just been appointed.
He said: “The foundation’s anthropologists will have the task of studying the culture of hitherto-neglected populations that are in danger of disappearing. The aim is to collect their oral traditions, memories, myths and ancestral stories before it is too late. This approach aims to ensure that nothing that is the work of humanity is lost”.
A professional code of ethics prohibits investigators from acquiring or receiving artefacts from the populations studied.