Agnès Mengelle watches over the Pyrenean heritage

In 2021, Agnès Mengelle launched a vast conservation and inventory project of the museum’s collections. This in-depth work, a first in the history of the establishment, lasted four years. It made it possible to identify, document and preserve each piece, from carts and sleds, to traditional clothing, tools, or even simple earthenware buttons.

To date, more than 8,000 objects have been processed: dusted, measured, weighed, photographed and recorded in a database. From now on, Agnès Mengelle and her team devote themselves to photographic funds, in particular to glass plates promising new discoveries.

From artisanal pieces to contemporary Pyrenean art, a varied selection

Originally from Cauterets (Hautes-Pyrénées) through her mother and from Massat (Ariège) through her father, Agnès Mengelle maintains a personal and sensitive link with the Pyrenees. A passionate hiker, she explores the mountain with her loved ones. This sensitivity is reflected in her way of selecting objects for the museum, favoring handcrafted pieces, old photographs, albums of drawings from the beginning of the 20th century, while remaining open to contemporary Pyrenean art, which she likes to place in dialogue with heritage.

For more than twenty-six years, Agnès Mengelle has embodied a rare form of dedication to the preservation and transmission of Pyrenean heritage, even if she humbly admits that she is not a Pyrenean. “For me, it’s a difficult state of mind to define today,” she explains. But her daily commitment, her intimate knowledge of the objects and her attachment to the mountains make her an essential figure at the museum.

Prolong the life of mountains and transmit their memory

Among the nuggets discovered during the work, Agnès Mengelle evokes with emotion drawings by Henry Russell, inventor of Pyrenean exploration, made in front of the Bellevue caves in Vignemale at the end of the 19th century. She is also amazed by modest but meaningful objects, like these ornate wooden skittles, witnesses of local popular traditions.

Another gem of the museum: its heritage library, which Agnès Mengelle describes as “unique in France, in Europe and perhaps in the world”. It houses some 30,000 works preserved in the keep of the castle-museum, including many copies autographed by Pyreneanists. This exceptional collection is accessible to researchers by appointment and during European Heritage Days.

For this child of the Pyrenees, conservation is not just a job: it is a way of prolonging the life of the mountains and passing on their memory to future generations.