Musée du quai Branly

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Musée du quai Branly
Musée du quai Branly

The Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac [ my'ze dy kɛ brɑ̃'li ] in Paris , also known as the Musée des Arts premiers or Musée des arts et civilizations d'Afrique, d'Asie, d'Océanie et des Amériques is the French National Museum of Non-European Art . The exhibition is expressly not - as is otherwise usual in Europe - designed according to ethnological aspects , but emphasizes the artistic characteristics of the exhibits.

The Musée du quai Branly opened in 2006, making it the youngest of the major Paris museums. In 2018 it had 1.3 million visitors. It is jointly managed by the Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and serves as both a museum and a research center. The building of the museum, designed by the architect Jean Nouvel , is located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, near the Eiffel Tower and the Pont de l'Alma. The closest Paris metro and RER stations are Alma-Marceau and Pont de l'Alma.

Collections and other departments of the museum

The museum brings together collections of ethnology from the Musée de l'Homme in the Palais de Chaillot and from the Musée national des arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, formerly in the Palais de la Porte Dorée . The museum's entire holdings include more than a million objects - including ethnological art objects, documents, visual or audiovisual objects - of which 3,500 can be seen in permanent and temporary thematic exhibitions. A selection of around 100 outstanding objects from the museum is also on display in the "Pavillon des Sessions" of the Louvre .

In its library / media center , the museum offers a large number of specialist literature, databases on images and audiovisual objects, which can be accessed either on site or in some cases online. The museum's Théâtre Claude Lévi-Strauss regularly hosts events such as concerts, discussions and film screenings on the museum's topics. The museum also provides ongoing information on current events through its website and social media.

The scientific department is dedicated to research, offers scholarships for young researchers, organizes colloquia and publishes its results both online and in traditional media.

Discussion about the restitution of African cultural assets

Since the end of 2018, the museum has been the focus of an international debate on the restitution of African cultural goods that were brought to France from former French colonies during the colonial era . Due to its holdings of around 70,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa, the Musée du quai Branly is at the center of a report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and prepared by two scientists, Bénédicte Savoy from France and Felwine Sarr from Senegal . who were asked to write a report on the background and possible restitution of African cultural heritage. The authors recommend that works of art for which it can not be proven that they were legally and morally acquired from Africa even according to today's ideas should be returned permanently if the country concerned requests this through diplomatic channels.

In June 2020 there was a protest in the museum. The Congolese activist Mwazulu Diyabanza and four companions entered the exhibition and denounced the theft of African cultural goods by the colonial powers and broadcast this via livestream on Facebook . Then he and a group member released a wooden exhibit from its anchorage and tried to carry it out of the museum, which was prevented by the museum guards.

History and status of the museum

Jacques Kerchache , art dealer and specialist in African art , tried in the early 1990s to get the “ Art premier ” (a term he coined) to be included in the Louvre's exhibitions as equal to other visual arts .

In 1990 he published an article about this in the French daily Liberation . In the same year he met Jacques Chirac , the then mayor of Paris , and was able to get him excited about the Art premier . After his election as French President in 1995, Chirac initiated a department for this art direction in the Louvre together with Kerchache. A year later, Chirac announced a project to create a new museum specifically dedicated to non-European art. This plan met with criticism, for example with a strike by the employees of the Musée de l'Homme in 1999, who opposed the destruction of the collections of their museum and the approach that the objects now primarily under aesthetic aspects and no longer only under ethnographic aspects To consider points of view.

The museum has the status of an établissement public ( German  public institution ). It is subordinate to three ministries: the Ministry of Culture and Communication (Ministère de la culture et de la communication) , the Ministry of National Education ( Ministère de l'éducation nationale ) and the Ministry of Research ( Ministère délégué à la recherche ) . The construction of the museum cost about 233 million euros.

The museum was opened on June 20, 2006 by Jacques Chirac in the presence of Kofi Annan , Rigoberta Menchú , Paul Okalik , Dominique de Villepin , Lionel Jospin and Jean-Pierre Raffarin . It has been open to the public since June 23, 2006.

Building and garden

Plant wall by Patrick Blanc

The museum, designed by the architect Jean Nouvel , has a floor space of 40,600 m 2 with its four buildings on the 2 hectare property between Quai Branly and Rue de l'Université . The dominating main gallery is built on stilts and thus seamlessly crosses the 18,000 m 2 garden designed by landscape architect Gilles Clément . This consists of small hills, paths, paved paths and small pools that invite you to meditate. 178 trees were planted. The property is shielded from the busy Quai Branly by a huge glass wall that connects to the plant wall of the administration building.

The four buildings are:

  • the main gallery, with a length of over 200 m, with several side rooms, which are visible from the outside through colorful rectangular protuberances. It also houses: an auditorium, a classroom, a reading room, space for temporary exhibitions and a restaurant. Half of the building is covered by a sinusoidal curved bridge that is more than 80 m long and leads to the actual starting point for viewing the collection.
  • the Université building with a souvenir shop or bookshop, offices and studios
  • the Branly administration building , which extends over five floors and is covered with an 800 m² plant wall ( Le mur végétal ) by Patrick Blanc . It is harmoniously docked onto the facade of the adjoining houses from the Haussmann era.
  • the Auvent , with the media library and a garden terrace.

Exhibitions

  • 2016: Matahoata. Arts et société aux Îles Marquises . Catalog.
  • 2016: Persona. Étrangement humain . Catalog.

Movie

  • Musée du Quai Branly. The new Ethnological Museum of Paris. Documentation, France, 2006, 90 min., Directors: Guy Seligmann, Pierre-André Boutang, production: arte France, first broadcast: October 6, 2006, summary by arte

See also

Web links

Commons : Musée du quai Branly  - collection of images, videos and audio files
images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Statistical information on the museum's website , accessed on October 23, 2019
  2. ^ Musée national des arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. Paris. Retrieved July 31, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Explorer les collections. Retrieved August 1, 2019 (French).
  4. ↑ A guide through the collections can be downloaded in German as a pdf here. [1]
  5. ↑ Musée du quai Branly: Le Pavillon des Sessions. Retrieved July 31, 2019 (French).
  6. ^ Bibliothèque et fonds documentaires. Retrieved July 31, 2019 (French).
  7. ↑ Soutenir les projets de recherche. Retrieved July 31, 2019 (French).
  8. ↑ http://restitutionreport2018.com/. Retrieved July 31, 2019 (French, English).
  9. ↑ Farah Nayeri: To Protest Colonialism, He Takes Artifacts From Museums. New York Times , September 21, 2020.
  10. ^ Sophia Nätscher: "Colonial objects" in the Humboldt Forum and in the Musée du Quai Branly - an interdisciplinary debate . ( academia.edu [accessed July 31, 2019]).
  11. ^ Stefan Simons: Museum on Quai Branly: Chirac's metallic dinosaur . In: Spiegel Online . June 20, 2006 ( spiegel.de [accessed July 31, 2019]).
  12. ↑ Paul Gaugin's last refuge in FAZ from June 15, 2016, page 12

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 39 ″  N , 2 ° 17 ′ 51 ″  E