Grande Rue 14 – 2112 Môtiers
Opening hours
The Mascarons Museum is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm to 5pm from 9 April to 18 December. Outside opening hours, or during the winter period, it can be opened for guided tours for groups (advance booking only).
Fees
- Individual entrance CHF 8.- / CHF 5.- *
- Group CHF 6.- / CHF 4.- per person *
- Free for accompanied children under 16
- Booklet for young visitors CHF 5.-
- Previously booked guided tours CHF 100.- (from 10 to 15 persons, duration 60 mn.)
* Reduced fees (AVS, students, unemployed, AI)
- Entrance free for members of the Société des Amis du MRVT, holders of a Museums Pass, Raiffeisen Card, AMS or ICOM
Exhibitions at the Mascarons Museum
Reference exhibition (permanent)
D’une vallée jurassienne aux grandes capitales du monde, trois siècles d’horlogerie au Val-de-Travers
From a Jura valley to the great capitals of the world, three centuries of watchmaking in the Val-de-Travers
The reference exhibition of the Macarons Museum is spread over ten rooms arranged in sober and contemporary museography. It brings you back to the rich watchmaking past of the Val-de-Travers. The large number of displayed items bear witness to the agrarian way of life preceding watchmaking, to the local watchmakers’ travels to France, England and China, as well as to the mechanization of watchmaking in the valley.
Discover why the inhabitants of the valley gradually left, as from 1730, their agricultural activities in favour of the watchmaking industry. Find out about the production system called “in broken parts”, which enabled local watchmakers to build quality pocket watches sold all over Europe. Did you know that Fleurier has become an important watchmaking center from 1830, thanks to the fabrication of time-keepers specially conceived for the Chinese?
The exhibition also allows you to follow the emergence of trademarks at the end of the 19th century and to understand better why they suffered from a crisis in the nineteen-seventies. Nowadays several firms, which are active in high-end watchmaking and well-known outside Switzerland, are established in the region, perpetuating a three centuries old industrial tradition.
Temporary exhibition
Hommage instantané – Daniel Schelling
Snapshot tribute – Daniel Schelling
Open till December 2020
Snapshort tribute is an opportunity for everyone not only to (re)discover Daniel Schelling’s work, but also to meet the real person. A paper, the Schelling News, specially created for the exhibition, audio stories by people who knew him, all kinds of photographs, all in the dark for an honorable farewell, that is what is awaiting you at the Mascarons Museum.
Part of the Daniel Schelling Photographic Fund has already been shown at the 4th edition of the Garden of Photography in Bremblens and during the exhibition “Transitions”, “Photography in the Neuchâtel Canton 1840-1970” at the Art and History Museum. However it had not been properly valorized in the Val-de-Travers. The MRVT has therefore decided to pay tribute to Daniel Schelling, who died in 2017, as well as to his work in the region which he loved and so much worked for.
To understand more
The museum is housed in Mascarons House, a patrician residence rebuilt in the middle of the 18th century. Its name comes from the carved masks decorating its windows. This building was bought in 1970 by the regional history and craft Museum Association in order to convert it into a museum and a theater. The theater, situated in an adjacent building which was previously a barn, is managed by the Mascarons Theater Group.
In 2013 an important renovation of the museum building was undertaken, including various new commodities, in particular a lift allowing access for people with restricted mobility. The work was done with maximum preservation of the original elements of the building. In November 2016 the Mascarons Museum reopened for the public.