Culture in Concarneau

Cultural Activities

Museums in Concarneau

The Museum of Fishing

• Presentation
• The Museum of Fishing in Concarneau
• History of the museum
• The permanent collections
• The spaces of visit
• The Floating Museum
• Maritime Aquariums
• Models

Exhibitions:
• On the 40 years of the Museum of Fishing, in may and june
• Sailors of Finistere until mai !

Finistere's fishermen

The Museum of the fishing of Concarneau dedicates until May 2001 an exhibition on "Finistere's fishermen". This exhibition redraws the life of these men through the shelters of the sailor. The history of these famous pink houses is connected to the fight of a man, Jacques de Thezac. At the end of the last century, this humanist aristocrat, fascinated by sail and by photography, gets married to a Breton and lives to Saint Marine in South Finistere. Very fast, he is surprised by the drama of the alcoholism which eats away at the maritime populations through the reading of Pierre Loti's book, my brother.

He chooses then to invest his personal fortune to fight this plague and this moral and material misery. He creates an edition, the Almanac of the Breton sailor, intended to supply to the sailors a minimum of maritime training thanks to numerous practical information.

Very fast, Jacques de Thezac wishes to go beyond. He chooses to undertake to get for the sailors with ground "a healthy, well warmed place, comfortably fitted out", where these last ones can collect "without being the prey of barmen". From 1900, He bases the first Shelter of the Sailor in Guilvinec, followed by twelve others along the Breton coasts. Animated by the ancient sailors, shelters are at the same moment reception centres (sleeping around and advice center), homes of animations (games and different competition) and centres of studies (library and centres of studies). Through the shelters of the sailor, Jacques de Thezac wishes to inculcate to the sailors a spiritual education, so religious as moral. So, every shelter contains moralizing maxims such as "it drowned itself in glasses much more than in seas".

The modernization of the techniques of fishing, the evolution of the conditions of life and sailor's profession fisherman pull at about the 1960's a decline of the company, even the lock of certain shelters.

Through this exhibition, the photos of the founder, Jacques de Thezac and objects of time tend to recreate the atmosphere which existed in these shelters of the sailor. They also underline all the social interest of this work which marked the world and the history of the fishing.

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