The History of the Berber Museum in Marrakech, Morocco

The blue building at the back of the Jardin Majorelle was never designed as a museum. Jacques Majorelle put it up as a painting studio, and for decades it worked as one. The history of the berber museum runs from that room through a garden that almost disappeared. It then passes to two collectors who spent half a lifetime gathering Amazigh craft.

The Berber museum in the Jardin Majorelle opened on 3 December 2011 in Jacques Majorelle’s former painting studio. In 2020 it took the name pierre bergé museum of berber arts. In this article, we will trace how a painter’s studio became a Berber museum, and how you can visit it on a Marrakech day.

A Painter’s Studio Before the Museum

Jacques Majorelle, a French painter, arrived in Marrakech in 1919 at thirty-three and stayed. In 1923 he bought land beside the palm grove. Eight years later he commissioned the architect Paul Sinoir to build him somewhere to work.

The result was pure Art Deco. At ground level he kept a double-height studio, with living quarters above and facades painted in the electric blue Majorelle mixed for himself. He fixed the tone in 1937, and because the shade had no name, people started calling it Majorelle blue. The ground floor was the jacques majorelle studio proper, with easels, canvases and paints. In 1947 he opened the garden around it to visitors.

After Majorelle died in October 1962, the garden lost its keeper and the studio stood quiet for years.

1980: Saint Laurent, Bergé and a Garden Slated for Demolition

Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé first saw the Jardin Majorelle in 1966. They kept coming back, so by the time the garden had gone neglected and was reportedly slated for demolition, they knew what was at stake. They bought it in 1980, their third property in Marrakech.

The work took years, starting with the planting, the water channels and the buildings. The museum was still thirty years away. Villa Oasis came with the grounds, and they made it a home. Their foundation still looks after the garden and the museum inside it. Bergé ran it until his death in 2017.

Saint Laurent died on 1 June 2008. Bergé then set the estate on a foundation footing and decided that part of it should hold a museum of Amazigh culture. Majorelle had painted Berber men and women, and the garden sits in the middle of Berber country, so the idea fit the address.

Six Hundred Berber Objects, One Collector’s Eye

Bergé and Saint Laurent started buying in 1966, the year they first saw the garden, and never stopped. Six hundred or so pieces now form the amazigh art collection. They were gathered across Morocco, from the Rif to the Sahara and through the Middle Atlas, the Anti-Atlas and the Souss valley. The buying ran for the rest of Bergé’s life.

Four themed spaces hold them, and the thread between the displays is the collector’s eye. The rooms also carry a tribal map and an archive film. What they bought tells you where they looked:

• Silver and enamel: fibulae and pendants worked with niello, the clasps that held a cloak.
• Wool and weave: carpets, blankets and woven bags, from large floor pieces down to small bags.
• Everyday and ceremonial pieces: dress, leather, basketry, pottery, weapons and instruments from ordinary Amazigh homes.

Most pieces date from the 19th to the mid-20th century, with older objects mixed in.

December 2011: A Museum, Then a New Name

The museum was inaugurated on 3 December 2011 by King Mohammed VI, in the ground-floor studio, roughly 200 m² of display space. It had already held a small museum of Islamic art, so the building was on its third life by then.

In his speech the king called Amazighity the shared patrimony of all Moroccans. The framing shapes how the collection reads today: a national inheritance with roots in every region, shown a short walk from the cafés of Gueliz. It is also a small museum by national standards.

On 12 October 2020 the museum took the official name it carries now, Musée Pierre Bergé des Arts Berbères. The announcement came on the third anniversary of the Yves Saint Laurent museum next door. Bergé had died in 2017, so he saw the museum open but not the renaming. His name on the door returns the collector to the objects he spent fifty years gathering.

Adding the Story to a Marrakech Day

You arrive with 1919, 1931 and 2011 in your head, and the cases open differently. A private guide can take you through the studio in the soft morning light. They can explain a fibula or a woven bag, then walk you into the medina while the light is still good.

Our practical guide to visiting the Berber Art Museum covers the rooms, the pieces worth stopping for, entry and crowds.

Ways to fit the museum into a route:

• City morning, Atlas afternoon: studio and medina first, then the Ourika valley road.
• A slow first day: garden at opening, museum after.
• Two hours, one thread: the studio first, then the garden around it.

Our nine-day Morocco tour from Marrakesh sets the studio before the road south, so the motifs in the Atlas come with a name. The eight-day Marrakech, Sahara and Essaouira tour comes back to the city at the end, with time to see the collection differently.

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