[MSN] Quai Branly concept debatable, but contents popular.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Quai Branly concept debatable, but contents popular 
French President Jacques Chirac's ambitious ticket to eternal fame, the Quai
Branly Museum, is situated literally in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the
world-famous Parisian landmark.

Museum director Stephane Martin describes the establishment as
multi-disciplinary. It is also meant to be a venue where concerts, theater
and lectures will contribute to the understanding of non-European cultures;
an attempt to remove vestiges of former colonialist attitudes. 

Construction and other costs reached 235 million euros (US$309 million),
financed equally by the ministries of education and of culture. 

Architect Jean Nouvel conceived a museum with a central building resembling
an exceedingly long canoe moored on stilts, around which landscape designer
Gilles Clement has planted the beginnings of a dense forest of oak, maple
and magnolias. "Exotic" arts and artifacts will thus be surrounded by
vegetation resembling the Amazon jungle transported to France. 

The long-awaited opening of Musee du Quai Branly took place from June 20-23,
2006, when the city was unbearably hot and dry. The landscaping around the
museum was barely visible so that the dark, cool space inside was a welcome
relief for guests keen to see the cause of all the fierce debates. 

Invited guests streamed in, an international mix of wealthy collectors of
non-European art, museum curators, donors and sponsors, high-powered art
dealers, academics, politicians and the media. Flamboyant fashion abounded
along with discrete chic, or in looks vaguely reminiscent of world
travellers. 

A century after painters Picasso, Matisse and Derain "discovered" what was
then called primitive art and instigated modernist art movements of
tremendous importance, such as cubism, interest has again been awakened by
objects that were used in the daily life and rituals of indigenous cultures.


All those who attended were curious, and not necessarily critical of the
idea of such an institution. It had become an international event to match
the renewed interest in collecting items from non-European cultures now
achieving extraordinary prices at sales and auctions -- as testified by the
four sales held around the museum opening, where prices ranged between
3,000-1.5 million euros. 

Many French academics like Christine Hemmet, now curator of Asian
collections at Branly, and "native" Parisians had rued that two well-beloved
museums were forcibly emptied in the course of the last decade. 

The art-deco jewel of the Musee des Arts Africains and Oceaniens with its
famous basement aquarium, and most of the striking premises of the natural
history museum, Musee de l'Homme, are now devoid of content and purpose
although they maintain a strong architectural presence in Paris. 

Chirac's favorite project is said to have been inspired by the late African
art collector, Jacques Kerchache, who believed that a museum for primary art
was necessary. 

Many questions were open to debate about the move. As American writer
Michael Kimmelman said in The New York Times: "The familiar
aesthetics-versus-ethnology question came up: Will religious, ceremonial and
practical objects, never intended as art in the modern, Western sense, be
showcased like baubles, with no context?" 

Fiercely critical French anthropologist and Africa expert Jean-Loup Amselle,
in a mid-June article in Le Nouvel Observateur weekly, found it amusing that
even the name of the museum, Quai Branly, only indicated its geographical
position, rather than its contents: "This means that for those directing the
organization, and for Jacques Chirac who is the initiator, the institutional
recycling of primitivism and exotic and tribal arts did pose some problems."


On the other side, renowned French anthropologist Maurice Godelier never
opposed the project and was nominated project director in 1999. Meanwhile,
others seconded his conviction that a new institution was necessary to
display the plurality of world cultures: "The challenge was to conceive a
resolutely post-colonial museum which permits the West to affirm a critical
version of its history." 

The immediate popularity of the museum seems to defy the validity of
questioning the concept behind such a museum situated between art and
natural history. 

-- Kunang Helmi 

http://www.thejakartapost.com/