The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that it describes the creation and functioning of museums of a very popular profile today — the Oriental one. The analyzed practice of the French museums, in many respects the foremost in the European museum space, can be creatively applied in the design and creation of museums of this type in our country. The article is the first in the domestic scientific tradition to explore the history of the creation of French museum collections devoted to the Himalayas and Tibet. The authors define the specificity of this type of museum construction, analyze the main factors that facilitated and hindered this type of activity, identify and characterize the sources of replenishment of collections and formats of their display. The article describes the Himalayan and Tibetan collections of both Parisian and provincial Oriental museums. The authors paid attention not only to the contents of the Himalayan and Tibetan collections, but also to the collectors themselves, thus paying tribute to their contribution to Europe’s knowledge of the region’s culture.

Keywords: Himalayas, Tibet, museum, collection, travel, artifacts, collector, fieldwork, explorer, geographer. more