The Cimiez Archaeological Museum has inaugurated its reading room within the Fernand Benoit documentation center. This room is open to everyone, where the museum’s works can be consulted.
“The documentation center has been around for a while, but not the reading room,” said Audrey Recouly, a librarian. With the creation of this public reading room, the museum aims to attract different kinds of visitors. “Before the opening of this room, the library was only available by appointment. We had a lot of researchers who came to work. Today, we hope to broaden our horizons,” Audrey Recouly shares. Students are indeed one of the main targets of the museum: “We’d like to attract young students, but I’m not sure everyone is aware of the inauguration of this place!” she laments. Unlike a traditional library, the museum’s library does not allow the lending of books: “We can’t lend them. These are beautiful works; it would be risky to let them be taken out,” comments the librarian.
A Tribute to Fernand Benoit
The opening of this documentation center was an opportunity for the museum to pay tribute to its founder. Monique Jannet, the curator of the heritage of the archaeological museum, emphasized this point. “What better than the inauguration of a reading room to honor Fernand Benoit,” she states. Indeed, Fernand Benoit was a brilliant archaeologist and archivist from the region. He was the one who dedicated himself to the excavations at the Cimiez site in 1954 before creating the museum we know today in 1960. Ms. Jannet praised her team for this inauguration before concluding with these words: “I hope that all the books available will enable our visitors to have an even more enlightened perspective on archaeology.”
