The exhibition explores the world of traditional archery, its history and its practices, including the Beursault shot and the Provincial Bouquet, which have been listed in the national inventory of intangible cultural heritage since 2015.
The figure of the archer, present in mythology and iconography, became increasingly important in the Middle Ages with the rise of guilds of archers, who acted as bourgeois militia and civil guards to defend towns and villages.
The Musée Vivant Denon conserves objects and archives from the archers' companies of Sevrey, Saint-Marcel-lès-Chalon, Lux and Chalon-sur-Saône from 1781 to 1893, presented to the public for the first time in connection with the Bouquet provincial (annual gathering of French archers' companies) to be held in Mâcon on 14 May 2023.
Thanks to our collections and the generous contributions of 21 public and private lenders (including the Musée de l'Armée, the Mobilier National and the Musée Bourdelle in Paris, the Musée de l'Archerie et du Valois in Crépy-en-Valois, the Musée du Château in Compiègne, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, Dunkerque and Nîmes, and the Bibliothèque Ceccano-Fondation Calvet in Avignon, etc.), the exhibition presents a corpus of over 190 works, objects and archive items relating to the history of traditional archery.
Enter the world of the archers' brotherhoods, and discover how they were organised, their codes, their equipment and the shooting practices they still practise today.

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