In France, revolutionary vandalism provoked the concept of conservation. It was the first time the state attempted to establish an administrative structure capable of identifying and preserving its national heritage. As a result, two practices were developed: inventory and storage/display. The creation of museums lent credence to the idea of a collective heritage that could be preserved for future generations. Decontextualized and devoid of their original function, these objects were now displayed in museums as a proud tribute to their new function.

On October 13, 1790, the National Assembly created the Commission des Monuments, which developed a project for the identification and distribution of objects into 83 depositories – one in each department. The Commission argued that public education would benefit from these museums, which were to be set up in several deconsecrated churches. The Muséum of the Louvre was intended to be one of the most powerful means of shedding lustre on the French Republic. Established by decree on 27 July 1793, it gathered the artworks scattered throughout temporary Parisian depositories and erstwhile royal palaces, and taken from collections in the former ownership of royals, émigrés, and the Church. The museum was granted 100,000 livres per year to purchase paintings and sculptures considered to be of importance for the Republic.

In October 1795, Alexandre Lenoir, painter and custodian of the Couvent des Petits-Augustins – a depository for the temporary storage of statues, marble, and metal material from religious establishments – presented a project for a historical and chronological museum. Each room was dedicated to a century, from the 13th to 17th, although the most significant monuments of each period were displayed in the salle d’introduction. A catalogue accompanied visitors through the centuries, giving them information about the different eras and the most influential historical figures. The museum was later closed down by Louis XVIII in 1816 on the advice of Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, author of the Lettres sur le préjudice qu’occasionneroient aux arts et à la science, le déplacement des monumens de l’art de l’Italie, le demembrement de ses écoles, et la spoliation de ses collections, galeries, musées, etc., published early in the Italian campaign (1796). Quatremère was convinced that works of art should be kept in their original location, and was hence opposed to the creation of museums. Indeed, while Republican historians like Michelet hailed museums as an innovatory and far-sighted national heritage policy, counter-revolutionaries saw museums as a direct offshoot of revolutionary vandalism.

Nonetheless, Lenoir’s museum gained an important public status, notably contributing to Romantic sentiment and medievalism. It inspired the archeologist and collector Alexandre du Sommerard (1779–1842), who collected artworks from the Middle Ages to the 17th century. After Du Sommerard’s death in 1842, his collection, located at the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris, was purchased by the state, and the museum was established which is now known as the Musée national du Moyen Âge.

The Louvre established as a museum in 1793, developed along different lines. Under Napoleon I, it became a triumphalist instrument of imperial propaganda. Nonetheless, it had a universalist vocation, due to the works of art demonstrating the continuity of universal (or at least Pan-European) cultural and artistic tradition. Starting from 1815-16, the museum became the centre of controversy over the legality of the seizures, and some portions were reclaimed by the plundered monarchs of Europe (notably the Pope, who sent Canova on a mission to retrieve the looted statuary). Even so, the Louvre’s collections grew considerably. By the mid-century, following the appointment of the painter Philippe-Auguste Jeanron as Director of the French National Museums (1848; soon replaced), the Louvre was reorganized, its collections inventorized, and the works of art presented by school and in chronological order. In the 1860s, the collections of the museum were further enriched thanks to Napoleon III, who purchased the bulk of the Collezione Campana from Rome (first housed at the Musée Napoléon and later the Louvre) in 1861.

Under the Bourbon Restoration, the idea of a national museum of modern French art also emerged. By royal decree, Louis XVIII designated the Musée du Luxembourg, which had first been opened in 1750, as the Musée royal destiné aux artistes vivants. On April 24, 1818, the Musée du Luxembourg was inaugurated as the first museum devoted to contemporary works of art. Over the following century, the role of museums as art acquisitors increased.

In 1816, for example, a report on La galerie historique ou cours d’histoire générale des tableaux argued that the purpose of art galleries was to draw the public’s attention to the history of their country. In 1817 and 1818, the administration of the museums commissioned a series of paintings portraying significant moments in French history from the earliest period until Henry IV. These paintings were intended to decorate the Galerie de Diane at the Palace of Fontainebleau. But the most important among such museums was the one dedicated à toutes les gloires de France (to all the glories of France), at the Palace of Versailles. Inaugurated in 1837, this museum assembled all periods in a wide-ranging collection of historical portraits and scenes.

In 1862, Napoleon III, a lover of archeology, decided to create a Musée des antiquités celtiques et gallo-romaines in the restored Château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Napoleon III promoted numerous excavations and created the Commission de la topographie de la Gaule; his establishment of this museum occurred in a period when interest in national relics, which had developed in the first half of the century, stimulated a national archeology. The first regulation of this museum (1866) specified that it was to become the central repository of all documents concerning the history of the races that had occupied the territory of Gaul from antiquity to the reign of Charlemagne; classifying these documents methodically; facilitating their access for the public by publishing them and encouraging their teaching. Napoleon III donated over five thousand artefacts to this museum, including objects retrieved from the excavations of Alésia, Uxellodunum, and the forest of Compiègne. The Musée des Antiquités Nationales, as it was known, was the first museum to be dedicated entirely to the archeology of the national territory. Its first seven halls were inaugurated during the second World Fair in Paris (1867).

Around the same time the colonial context led to the establishment of ethnographic museums. The Museum ethnographique des Missions Scientifiques, brainchild of the anthropologist Ernest-Theodore Hamy, opened in 1878, with the aim of collecting all ethnographic objects from missions, donations, exchanges, or acquisitions; as of 1882, it was housed in the Trocadéro Palace, constructed for the 1878 World Fair. The Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro acquired several collections from the Bibliothèque Nationale (Cabinet des Médailles), Musée du Louvre, Musée de la Marine, and Musée des Antiquités Nationales de Saint Germain en Laye.

In 1889, the geologist Armand Landrin, assistant naturalist at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle and the first curator at the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadéro (1880), proposed the creation of a Musée des Provinces de France to the Paris City Council. The museum was to have an educational mission, displaying objects representing the diverse aspects of the French provinces in a picturesque and informative way. This proposal never materialized, but the French provinces were nevertheless represented in the Salle de France at the Trocadéro Museum. Other ethnographic museums were established in the provinces, such as, for example, the Museon Arlaten, an initiative of the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral, and inaugurated in Arles, in 1899.

Under the Third Republic, the state actively regulated and inspected these museums. At the same time, the number of local museums increased, with the aim of making the wealth of the provinces known to a wider public. Often promoted by the local sociétés savantes, these small museums housed diverse collections with the regionalist intent of showcasing the history and virtues of the petite patrie. In 1905, the Minister of Public Education commissioned an extra-parliamentary committee to study all aspects relating to the organization of the provincial museums and the preservation of their artistic assets. The “Republican” notion of museum was characterized by a concern for widespread education as well as a sense of serving civic function. As a result, over the 19th century, the number of museums grew significantly, increasing from twenty to about six hundred.