Museum of primal arts

The eagerly anticipated opening of the Quai Branly museum took place recently during the second France-Oceania summit. Devoted to the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, this institution, under UNESCO patronage, aims to restore these regions to their rightful place.

"The idea of equality between cultures" is what the Quai Branly museum intends to promote and it can now be visited by lovers of non-European arts and cultures. Indeed, the institution, which brings together the collections of the national museum of the Arts of Africa and Oceania and the ethnology department at the museum of Mankind, claims it will be distinctive for its "radical new policy which is in complete contrast with the colonial past".

But the museum, whose creation was decided in 1996 by the French president, Jacques Chirac, is also distinctive in other ways, such as the building itself. Standing in the middle of a wooded garden, the main building, designed by architect Jean Nouvel, resembles a footbridge on stilts protected by a long, high, curving glass palisade.

Fascinating feature

Another fascinating feature is an enormous living wall, covering the administrative building with a mixture of 15,000 plants of 150 different species. It was designed by Patrick Blanc, a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientific [French national centre for scientific research]. The quality, diversity and presentation of the collections it contains cannot fail to amaze visitors.

The exhibits are arranged in geographical areas (Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas) and meeting-point spaces (Asia-Oceania, Insulind, etc.). The arrangement places special stress on the "historical depth of the cultures presented" and takes a themed approach. In a central mezzanine, the contributions of 20th-century anthropology are presented too. More than 3,500 of the museum's 300,000 works will be on permanent exhibition.

Research centre too

Some of them will not pass unnoticed. This is particularly true of the Moai Head, a monumental sculpture shipped from Easter Island in the 19th century, and the Seligmann Mast, a gigantic red cedar totem pole made by the Indians of British Columbia.

The collections have benefited from a campaign of preventive conservation (checking and updating the inventory, decontamination, cleaning, computerisation, 3D photographs) unprecedented in France.

An acquisitions policy has also been introduced to enable the museum to obtain around a hundred exceptional pieces, to build up the collections and in particular to fill "the gaps that colonial or scientific history has left in the geographical representation of these cultures" [2]. So that the objects in reserve too may be revealed in all their splendour, these will be the star exhibits in temporary exhibitions.

Contemporary

Contemporary events and creative work will also have their place. The first long exhibition proposed after the opening is called "What is a body?". There will also be a programme of performances (music, dance, theatre, etc.) linked to the collections. Lastly, visitors will be able to extend their knowledge in the media library, which has a considerable collection and provides free access to 25,000 works.

Supervised by the Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research, the museum aims to become a high-flying centre of research and education, firmly committed to an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, as well as anthropology, the centre will refer to archaeology, linguistics, history, art history and aesthetics too.

(Courtesy label FRANCE)