Road trip Berlin to Spain, part 3
Montpellier: An unusal museum and a car problem
From Dijon I drive south to Montpellier. Here, I visit the world’s only museum dedicated to female fecundity and resolve a problem with my car.
I will be reporting on the Museum of Art and Fecundity in Montpellier for the radio. So I will only reveal the bare essentials in this text and hopefully whet your appetite for more.
Strictly speaking, the third stage of my road trip doesn’t actually take me from Dijon to Montpellier, but “only” as far as Bourg de Péage, a town with 5,000 inhabitants south of Lyon. But since I’m not doing anything here except spending the night (again with very pleasant and hospitable Servas members), I’ll skip the details.
However, when I sit in my car the next morning and start the engine, I hear a shrill, whirring noise that sounds like a discordant song on endless repeat and clearly comes from my car. Oh dear. Could this be the end of our road trip already? I do what I often do in such situations: I call my friend in Berlin who helped me get my Volkswagen Fox twenty years ago. He suspects a loose V-belt and recommends letting the engine warm up for a few minutes before driving off, which should make the noise go away. Then I should have a mechanic check it out at my next stop. And that’s what happens.
My next stop now is indeed Montpellier. The sky is overcast, and the sun is only dimly shimmering through the cloud cover. At the side of the road, I see the slender, pointed trees that, for some inexplicable reason, I associate with this region, which I have never visited before: Mediterranean cypresses. This evergreen conifer is also found in Tuscany, Italy (which is also unknown to me).
I wasn’t particularly interested in Montpellier to begin with, but the city is simply on the direct route to my destination: Spain. Once again, I asked Servas members if they would host me for two nights. Vincent Fauveau said “yes.” He then also told me about his “Musee Art et Fécondité” (Museum of Art and Fecundity), which he opened in Montpellier in 2022. As already mentioned, I will only reveal as much in this text as to ensure that my radio report will still be exciting for listeners when it is broadcast.
I expect a veritable museum and am somewhat surprised: Fauveau’s exhibition in Montpellier’s art district is housed in the rooms of the “Shambhala” center, a former group practice of three doctors. One of them is a friend of Fauveau’s and now rents the rooms to people who, in his eyes, enrich the world with something meaningful: yoga, meditation, psychotherapy, lectures – and his friend’s collection of ethnographic objects related to conception, pregnancy, and birth. Vincent Fauveau opens it to visitors every Monday and then guides them through the exhibition himself in French and English. Groups usually register in advance. The exhibits range from 12,000 BC through the Neolithic period to the modern times. During his tour, Fauveau shows, for example, a picture depicting the birth of Buddha from a woman’s right rib, similar to the “birth” of Eve from Adam’s rib as recounted in the Old Testament. From our present day comes a pregnant Barbie doll from the USA, whose large belly is removable and contains a baby. Fauveau explains that his daughter learned about reproduction through play with such a doll.
Only the small figurines of pregnant women from the Neolithic period are replicas; Fauveau collected all the other exhibits over more than forty years of traveling halfway around the world. The former pediatrician, neonatologist, and obstetrician, who worked in many countries of the socalled Third World, combines his professional experience with his interest in the artistic representation of female fecundity in his exhibits. His first collectibles were mainly primitive art from Africa, but gradually others from all over the world were added.
Fauveau has screwed small wheels onto the display cases containing the artifacts so that he can roll the exhibits out of the communal rooms every Monday evening. He places the display cases in a separate room, covers them with white cotton cloths, and rolls them back in again the following Monday before the museum opens. Fauveau’s book, which he wrote to accompany the exhibition, is on display next to the Shambhala entrance door, at the ticket office. Two pregnant women made of clay, standing next to the pregnant Barbie in a display case, are also his work. So is a egg chair reminiscent of the 1960s, which he has named “Back to the Egg.” At the end of my visit, I have the pleasure of sitting inside the egg, which can be closed with a plastic tarpaulin, and listening to the mother’s heartbeat played through loudspeakers, just as babies do in the womb. I find the sounds very loud. Vincent Fauveau suspects that they must be even louder for the baby in the womb. Disturbing noises such as traffic noise or arguments between people would thus be drowned out.
Last but not least, I drive my car to a repair shop. It has the amusing English name “Speedy,” like Speedy Gonzales, because you are served immediately when you drive up as a customer. Since I don’t expect French car mechanics to speak English or German, I have a note with me as a precaution, on which I have written in French what my friend in Berlin diagnosed as the problem. The mechanic takes a quick look under the hood, finds everything to be in order, and I drive off again.
Next stop: Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, city of the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí
This text was first published on my German website and translated by me.