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Figure 7 André Malraux with the photographic plates for The Museum
Without Walls, ca. 1950.
Source: Photo © Paris Match/Jarnoux.

call for the (re)convergence of museum, archive and library in an all-embracing
documentation science’ with its combination of temporary exhibition spaces,
museum of contemporary art, forum and library (Ernst 2000a: 30). In Otlet’s
combination of museum and documentation centre, the distribution of knowl-
edge was as crucial as its accumulation (as opposed to the centralized model of
police bureaucracy for instance). In the museum, as Ernst says, ‘Historical
narrative was a means to master the arbitrariness of collections’ and museum
display produced narratives of nation by organizing the relationships between
objects. As Otlet and Le Corbusier’s Geneva plans reveal, the Mundaneums
were not intended to do away with narratives of progress (see Vidler 2001).