"“Museo Antropológico y Arqueológico de Buenos Aires: Colección Exposición Universal de París 1878” (“Museo Antropológico y Arqueológico de Buenos Aires: Universal Exposition Collection, Paris 1878”)...

The collection was part of the Museo Antropológico y Arqueológico de Buenos Aires founded in 1877 by Francisco Pascasio Moreno (1852-1919). That institution was closed in 1884 and all the collections were transferred to the Museo de La Plata created the same year by Moreno with the support of provincial Government

In 1878, Moreno ordered to photograph a selection of indigenous skulls collections contained in the Museo Antropológico y Arqueológico de Buenos Aires, in order to made an album to be formally exhibited in Paris between May and October of that year in the Argentinean pavilion of the Universal Exposition. The album contained around fifty photographs illustrating different types of indigenous inhabitants skulls. Moreno sent the album to Paris probably reserving copies for the institution.

The photographs was taken of front and profile, three quarters of the original size of the skulls, on clear and dark backgrounds. Once the Exposition finished, Moreno, as director of the Museo Antropológico y Arqueológico de Buenos Aires, ordered the donation of the album to the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris. It was used there as evidence by Paul Topinard (1852-1919) in discussions about the origin and relationships of American racial types. During the course of the Exposition were taken photographs of the Argentinean pavilion. In the case of the skulls photographs, a document found attached to the collection suggests that we are before silver print copies that were made around 1901 from the original photographs taken in 1878.