The main axes of the history of the collections of the Musée des Arts et Métiers are now established, following a rigorous work of identification and analysis of objects and sources. The study of the corpus (provenance, typologies, technical sectors) has highlighted the mechanisms and criteria of acquisition, the notions of innovation and museification, the evolution of museography and museology. The study of the collections in their entirety—objects present and missing— highlights the status of the collections and their traceability. This approach, essential to the ten-year inventory (imposed by the French museums law 2002), requires reconstituting the collection and the state of the archives in relation to management practices.
