During the following years, he cared for the D. David-Weill collection, which included Chinese porcelains, Greek and Roman antiquities, and European decorative arts and paintings.
That year, he launched the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, also based on the Trocadéro museum's ethnographic collections.
Oriented toward public education, its collection and exhibitions programme first focused on popular traditional art forms before dedicating itself to science and research with the introduction of the Centre d'Ethnologie Française, inaugurated shortly after the Second World War.
Between 1948 and 1965, Georges-Henri Rivière served as the first acting director of ICOM, the International Council of Museums, to which he returned as Permanent Advisor in 1968.
Widely credited for introducing the concept of the ecomuseum, which attempts to portray civilizations in their natural environments, he was one of the most highly esteemed museological entrepreneurs in modern France.