History

On 29 April 2016 we celebrated the first 140 years of the museum’s life. Not bad. This makes us one of the oldest museums in Madrid and Spain and of course, the first in the field of anthropology. And it has the merit of having always been in the same place, in a building that was created to house it, which is something rather uncommon.

Naturally, the Museum had its ups and downs and it needed to adapt and evolve repeatedly to survive in different social, institutional and political contexts, even changing its name and thematic direction on several occasions. This clearly indicates that it has always maintained and renewed the pioneering spirit that the doctor instilled in it, which has also been, and continues to be, one of its strengths. This is the spirit which inspires us now and to which we want to be loyal, so that, without changing our “shell”, we can take a further step forward and transform it into a collaborative museum, committed to the multifaceted and intercultural society of today in the context of social anthropology.