This paper draws on assemblage theory to examine how museum collections of anthropological materials produce cultures in ways that constitute distinctive ‘working surfaces’ on the social through which governmental programmes can be developed and applied to specific populations. The argument is developed in relation to the development of the Musée de l’Homme and of the Museé des Arts et Traditions Populaires. These are examined to identify the ways in which their exhibition and laboratory functions served to provide new templates for projects of colonial governance and, within France, for programmes of regional administration. The argument is historically contextualised by considering the place of both museums in relation to the longer history of anthropological collections in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century France, and how, in part, they were formed through processes of disassembling and reassembling their constituent elements.