The Museum of the Americas-Auch, formerly known as the Jacobins Museum, is located in the historic center of the city.
Created in 1793, the museum had taken the name of the convent (listed in the supplementary inventory of historical monuments) in which it had settled in 1979.
In 2019, after several months of work, in accessibility and reorganization of the visit route, the Jacobins museum, which took the name of "Musée des Amériques-Auch", reopened its doors to offer a new museographic route which develops over 19 rooms and more than 1000 m² of permanent exhibitions.
It reveals itself with this new identity "Museum of the Americas - Auch" more in line with the richness and diversity of its American collections (2nd collection of pre-Columbian art in France after that of the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac) but also local testifying to the history of Gascony, from Antiquity to the first half of the 20th century.
This singularity is linked to the personality of Guillaume Pujos, born in Auch in 1852, and who went to Latin America in 1879 to settle in Chile. Traveling also in the other countries of the South American continent, he built up an important collection which he bequeathed to his native town on his death, having returned to France in 1906. He was, moreover, curator of the museum from 1911 to his death, in 1921.
It should be noted that this pre-Columbian collection was supplemented by various donations in the second half of the 20th century. It thus offers a complete panorama of the pre-Hispanic cultures of Peru, Ecuador, Central America and Mexico up to the Spanish conquest. More than 400 pieces of goldsmithery, ceramics, weaving, wood are exhibited. The collection of Latin American sacred art, for its part, is certainly the rarest. Don't miss the exceptional Mass of Saint Gregory, a feather painting created using an Aztec technique in Mexico City in 1539, less than 20 years after the conquest by Cortés. It is probably one of the oldest Christian works in the New World.
The museum also owns and presents other collections: European and Egyptian antiquities, regional archeology (including the splendid frescoes from the Gallo-Roman palace of Roquelaure dating from 20 BC), art medieval, decorative arts, furniture and popular traditions of Gascony. There is also a collection of Fine Arts highlighting the works of Gers painters and sculptors from the 18th to the 20th century, including the splendid Phases of Light by Jean-Louis Rouméguère, the astonishing Fiancés reconciled by Mario Cavaglieri, or Antonin Carlès' sculpture entitled La Jeunesse. A statue of Emperor Trajan (1st century AD) and a bust of Louis XVI by Houdon are among the museum's major pieces.
Practical information:
Audio guide available in French, English and Spanish.
Booklets-games offered free of charge: for 4 year olds, 4 to 6 year olds, 7 to 9 year olds, 10 to 12 year olds and for teens-adults. An audio description tour is also available, accompanied by a booklet to discover the works. For people with visual disabilities, two works from the collection can be touched with gloves.
Open every day except public holidays. Annual closing in January.
Price: 3 and 6 euros.
Free the first weekend of each month. Information on +33 5 62 05 74 79.
