This ethnographic study of the creation of a museum in Le Creusot (France) provides an analysis of the heritage industry that emerged in the wake of the demise of a family company around which the town was built. This museum was a reaction to the passing of an age when industrial and urban environments were intrinsically linked. Through this description of how the past is collected and recollected in a museum, this article attempts to determine if this duty of remembrance is not, to a certain extent, a strategy of forgetfulness. Is cultural regeneration—the staging of history fading into oblivion—our society’s sole response to industrial regeneration?
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