The bird museum in Sauturac lasted less than twenty years. In 2012 the estate was sold and the building became an artist's studio. In 2016 it was shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale, when the museum was already gone.
It was the idea of Michel Coste, owner of the Ardailloux vineyard across from Bonaguil castle. He wanted to show the public a collection of stuffed birds assembled a hundred years earlier. The architect, Pascale de Redon, took as her model the tobacco-drying barns that stand all over southwest France. Inside, the birds were placed on masts as if on branches, and halfway up a walkway lets visitors go around them.
Coste is a writer from Monpazier. He bought back his ancestors' lands, revived the vineyard and took part in creating the tour of Bonaguil castle. The museum was part of a bigger plan to turn the estate into a place that shows rural life. Nearby there were a wine cellar, forest paths and winemaking lessons.
Guidebooks wrote about roughly 250 European birds, arranged by habitat: mountains, pond, field, shore. The vertical display was explained by an old symbol in which a bird is a soul that links earth and sky. The birds stood on platforms of perforated sheet, and the guidebook noted that they looked unusually alive.
The building was put up by three local firms: a mason, a carpenter and a joiner. The chestnut for the frame came from the forest around the estate, and the client did the interior himself. In 2001 the museum won the Midi-Pyrénées first prize for architecture in the category of cultural places.
