Claire Bosc-Tiessé is a senior research director at the CNRS, a member of the Institut des Mondes Africains, and Director of Studies at the EHESS, where she holds the chair “History of Pre-Contemporary African Objects: Practices and Methods.” A specialist in Ethiopia, she also conducts research on artistic production in the Christian kingdom over the long term, from the 12th to the 19th century.
More broadly, her work is part of a reflection on the conditions and methods for writing a history of African arts prior to the 20th century, as well as its stakes. To renew research in this field, she established a flagship program at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, “Vestiges, Clues, Paradigms: Places and Times of African Objects, 14th–19th Century” (2017–2023). Within this framework, she developed a mapping of collections of African and Oceanian objects in museums, titled Museum in Museum, World in Museum. The project concluded with an international conference, “Early Collections: The Beginnings of African Objects in Western Museums,” accompanied by focus exhibitions in seven museums in Paris and other regions, as well as an online exhibition, “Why Are There African Objects in the Museums of Bourgogne–Franche-Comté?”
Since then, she has served as associate curator of the exhibition “Dakar-Djibouti Mission (1931–1933): Counter-Investigations” at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (April–September 2025).
