A free drawing school before it became a museum, the Musée Vivant Denon has been collecting evidence of local and European cultures from the outset. Its collection is the fruit of individual adventures, the passion and generosity of illustrious and lesser-known figures alike. Expressions of creativity, these works cannot be reduced to a single artistic movement or art form. As bearers of history, personal experience, feelings and knowledge, or solely linked to a specific use, these museum objects were created one day by a man for other men.
In 1866, Jules Chevrier, a Chalonnais merchant and town councillor, obtained the creation of a museum dedicated to the riches of the town’s heritage. A lover of the arts, he became the first curator. The museum was set up within the walls of the drawing school, which moved to rue Fructidor and became today’s École Média Art (EMA | Fructidor).
In 1895, in honor of the great Chalon-born man, it was named the Musée Vivant Denon.
Over the years, various donations of collections and numerous archaeological discoveries from the Saône led the city to expand the museum with the addition of the former girls’ school on rue Boichot in 1957.
In the 1970s, with the arrival of curator and archaeologist Louis Bonnamour, underwater research operations were carried out in the Saône, the first of their kind in Europe. These considerably enriched the collections of the archaeology section, which provides a panorama of human occupation of the Saône Valley from prehistory to the present day.
Today, the Musée Denon collection boasts 25,000 archaeological objects, 11,000 sculptures, graphic works and ethnographic objects, spanning 100,000 years of history.
