CONSERVATION OF PARACAS TEXTILES IN THE MNAAHP The Instituto Nacional de Cultura [National Institute of Culture] MNAAHP - Musée du Quai Branly, France, Agreement In November 2004 Dr. Luis Guillermo Lumbreras, director of the National Institute of Culture of Peru and the representative of the Musée du Quai Branly of France, Madame Héléne Cerutti, signed an agreement for binational collaboration where the French have committed €68,000 Euros to finance the Conservation and Restoration Campaign for forty-three Paracas textiles, for the purpose of including them in an important exhibition on this culture to take place in Paris in the spring of 2008.   The Musée du Quai Branly currently under the direction of Mr. Stéphane Martin, was created in December 1998, with the mission of providing an original cultural complex of a museological and scientific character, entrusted with the conservation and public presentation of French State collections and visiting collections representative of Africa, Oceania, America and Asia, which led to the idea of including some of the most beautiful textile specimens from one of the world's most important collections, namely the Paracas collection of the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru. This will be one of the most important exhibitions in the world in recent decades on Paracas culture. Among other materials such as ceramics and metals, forty-seven textiles will be included, forty-three of which have never been exhibited due to lack of resources for their conservation. France's significant collaboration with our country's cultural patrimony will entirely finance placing value on the selected textiles which are of different types, the most outstanding are: 15 Paracas mantles, in addition to miniatures, shoulder capes, a fox skin, a fan, turbans, skirts, batons and unkus [tunics]. All these materials come from the funeral bundles that were excavated by Julio C. Tello from 1925 to 1928. These textiles therefore, besides their interesting esthetic appearance, contain important archaeological information regarding different aspects of the ancient inhabitants of Paracas. The execution of the Conservation Campaign, which will last for two years, will be carried out by a select group of experienced Peruvian textile conservators, directed by the curator in charge of the Department of Textiles of the MNAAHP. The nature of the campaign is also to contemplate the participation of French professionals for the sake of collaborating and exchanging knowledge of textile conservation techniques to take part in the most appropriate way for packing and installing the museographic exhibition. The Musée du Quai Branly named Dr. Daniéle Lavallée, a prestigious French archaeologist who has been doing research since 1960 on Andean culture, in charge of scientific research for the museographic script of this exhibition where the most recent data on the Paracas culture will be contemplated. In charge of the execution of the project: Carmen Thays Delgado, Licenciada.