A Public on Display: Making Civil Engagement Visible at the Musée des Français

The opening of the Musée des Français was part of a strategy to repurpose a past cultural heritage to the ideological needs of a new republic. As a public institution, it was a rupture from the ancien régime; as a space for public engagement, it implicated the public in an historical discourse in which they were now expected to take part. This function was made possible by creating a vision of the Republic and how and where the public, as citizens, fit into a national discourse that both included them and relied on them for its future.