What Changes when an Object Change Hands? Paths and Troubles in the Musealisation of Activist Objects related to the Fight against HIV/AIDS

Almost twenty-five years ago, shortly after the introduction of triple therapy, new forms of memory emerged in response to the human and cultural losses caused by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Between 2002 and 2005, two anthropologists commissioned by French National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions carried out a survey-acquisition campaign on the history and memories of AIDS in France, Europe and the Mediterranean, collecting over 12,000 artefacts (documentation, prevention material, objects used at events, etc.) from numerous associations and activists. The collection came to an end with the closure of the Paris museum and was transferred to the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (Mucem), which opened in Marseilles in 2013. This article looks at the musealisation of two dresses, now housed at the Mucem, that belonged to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an activist movement involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS. What does an activist object gain and lose by entering the museum? What happens to the data co-produced by anthropologists and their partners in the field to document the context in which ethnographic objects are used? What happens when a Sister of today asks the museum for access to the objects of a sister of yesterday, and what kind of knowledge, documentation or new objects can the former contribute?