The Musée Barbier-Mueller occupies three floors of a 16th-century house on rue Calvin, a short walk from the cathedral. The museum holds one of the world's finest private collections of ancient and tribal art: pre-Columbian ceramics and goldwork, African masks and sculpture, Pacific Oceanic objects, and art from Southeast Asia and the ancient Mediterranean. The collection was assembled over three generations by the Barbier-Mueller family, who opened it to the public in 1977.
What distinguishes the Barbier-Mueller from ethnographic museums with similar holdings is the quality of selection and the presentation: the objects are displayed as works of art, not as anthropological specimens, with careful lighting and minimal labelling that demands you look hard at the things themselves. Admission is modest. The house is quiet enough that you rarely share the galleries with more than a handful of other visitors.