Comment rester vigilant face à l’oubli ? Le musée de la fonderie à Rosières. How to remain vigilant against forgetting ? Rosières’s foundry museum.

La mise en exposition d’objets liés au travail dépasse largement la simple présentation au public d’un savoir-faire ou d’une technique. Dans cette cité ouvrière du département du Cher, dans le centre de la France, les objets exposés au musée de la Fonderie semblent donner au visiteur bien plus qu’une vision générale du travail de la fonte. A travers l’analyse de la création de ce musée, de la mise en place d’un véritable réseau de vigilance contre la perte, et de l’exposition qui laisse transparaitre bien plus que des outils de travail, nous envisagerons ici le musée de la fonderie comme un microcosme d’une vie sociale aujourd’hui révolue, indissociable de l’usine et du paternalisme industriel qui a géré la vie des salariés pendant près d’un siècle et demi. More and more museums are dedicated to local histories of work and labour, displaying industrial artefacts and objects directly taken from the work place. In such museums, the visitors do not only get a chance to discover specific techniques and savoir-faire. The purpose is also to expose them to a much encompassing cultural experience. In the local museum of Rosières, a small industrial town located in the centre of France, the visitors are offered much more than the possibility to get a grasp of the smelting work itself, which we demonstrate through an analysis of the history of this museum, of the content of its permanent exhibition, and of a network of individuals who try to keep the industrial memory of this area alive. This museum indeed appears to function as a microcosm of a social life that no longer exists, and that was strongly connected to the factory life and the industrial plant as well as industrial paternalism that ruled the workers’ lives during almost one and a half century.