Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration

When the Palais de la Porte Dorée opened on May 5 1931 it was to serve as an exhibition space for the Exposition Coloniale, the largest and most spectacular of colonial exhibitions in France. In the years that followed it served as a museum for non-European art before a section was repurposed in 2007 for what is now the Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (MNHI). For some, the presence of the MNHI effects a reversal of the building’s original colonial function, for others the MNHI is compromised by the colonial carapace that surrounds it. This entry tracks the history of the building and the controversies that surrounded the location of migrant memories and artefacts within a site of colonial memory.