The exhibition, called “Des cheveux et des poils” in French, which means something like “Hair and Fur,” runs through Sept. 17 and takes up both floors of the museum’s main gallery space. It is billed as delving into “the hairy history of hair from the 15th century to the present day,” with over 600 objects and art works gathered from museums around the world, exploring the evolution of women’s hairstyles, the question of removing facial and body hair for men and women, hairpieces, hair dye, razors, hair dryers, cultural attitudes to baldness, “the pixie and sauerkraut of the 1960s” and the “hurluberlu” of the mid-17th century. Hair, hair, hair.

When first entering the space — through a doorway printed with a close-up of a rugby player’s rampant chest hair from a 1912 painting by Eugène Pascau — the prospect of so much hair-themed material ahead seems something of a chore. How long can thoughts of hair occupy the attention, really? How interesting can 600-plus hair-related objects actually be?

Yet hair — and what we think it says about ourselves and others — turns out to be one of the interesting subjects in the world, and 600 objects isn’t nearly enough. An exhibition about hair is also an exhibition about self-presentation and self-perception, difference and hierarchy, race, religion, control, disgust, childhood, adulthood, masculinity and femininity.

Take Louis Leopold Boilly’s “Portrait of Madame Fouler” (1810), in the first room of the show. A young woman with an arrestingly chic haircut — cropped, curly and imminently due a revival, if anyone is looking for an image to show their hairdresser — looks off to one side with a halfhearted smile. The accompanying label explains that the seemingly anachronistic shortness of Madame Fouler’s style, known as the “Titus,” had its origins in the “bals des victimes,” dances that were held during the French Revolution for the relatives of people whose life was cut short by the guillotine. There is a description from a contemporary witness, who recounts that some of the balls required that attendees “cut their hair short around the neck, just as the executioner cuts the hair of victims.” A haircut is an announcement, as Madame Fouler knew.