Matt and I went on Saturday afternoon to see the museum. It used to be the museum of primitive art (so problematic!) but during his time in office it was Jacques Chirac’s project to redo the museum. All of the presidents of the 5th republic have had some sort of a project like this one… Mitterand’s was the pyramid at the Louvre, Georges Pompidou was the Centre Pompidou etc.
So Jacques Chirac did this museum… which is now a museum of art from the different continents, the America’s, Asia, Africa and Oceania. It has a cool building designed by the architect Jean Nouvel (who also designed the Institut du Monde Arabe!) and is very close to the Eifel Tower. They have an exhibit there now that we both wanted to see, which was called “Sexe, Mort et Sacrifice” (Sex, Death and Sacrifice) which is a display of artifacts and art pieces from the Mochia society which existed in modern day northern Peru between the 1st and 8th centuries C.E. So we wanted to see that juicy exhibit, but I was also very interested to see this museum that has objects from all over the world. I will explain about the museum and what I thought, and the questions I have, but first I must go on a little tangent about why I love France…Why do I love France? Because France loves its young people, its students, but not just students, young people in general. So in all museums in Europe you can get in for free or for a reduced fee if you are between the ages of 18-26, and a European citizen. Why? I think because they just know that people between those ages are broke, but still like to go to museums and exhibits and stuff so they let them in for free. And cause people that age are generally students as well… but anyway. Perhaps you remember how frustrated I was in Florence when they had no international student discounts, and how I had to pay 6.50 € every other minute to get into a museum because I didn’t have a European passport? Well they were really bitchy about it in Italy, and no one without at passport could get the reduced tariff, and no one ever is getting in for free. But it is quite the opposite in Paris. At the Musee de Quai Branly, they have machines to sell student tickets (well sell is not right cause they are FREE) and the tickets work for the special exhibits and everything! So we got some free tickets, and all we had to do was show our student ID’s from IFE (which are hardly French identity cards) and they didn’t look twice. It was free for us to go. Sometimes they ask “How old are you, where do you live?” But if you say, 21 and Paris, they don’t think twice. They don’t ask for ID cards at all, and you are into the museum completely free!
I really like this (mostly cause it benefits me) but also because I think it shows how much France values its young people, but it also shows how rich the French gov’t (or how strong the image the government has of being rich) is since they fund the museums, and they don’t really care if you pay or not. That is perhaps the difference between France and Italy… the Italian government doesn’t have the money or the stability the French one does, and if they want to keep their museums up to par then you HAVE to pay. But regardless of that, I love France because I get to do all kinds of cool stuff for free. That is the Moberg in me… and also the college student I think. Ok, so after that little tangent, back to the museum. We went first to the special exhibit… which I am not going to lie was really strange because these people were really into human sacrifice and kinky sex stuff, and it was just kind of strange… interesting but strange.
I am not going to post any pics of the stuff we saw cause well, they are explicit, and I want to keep this blog PG for the kids out there… but it was really strange. But we went to the general collection as well, and now I am going to nerd out, and write about all the thoughts and stuff I had during my visit to the general collection.Ok so, maybe everyone reading this doesn’t know this about me, but I am really interested in going into museum work. I am a Conflict Studies major which is an interdisciplinary program at DePauw, and I am focusing in Anthropology, Art History and Political Science. I am particularly interested in the politics of post-colonial representation, of how the west represents the ‘other’ in institutional spaces in the 21st century… that is the shortest explanation of what I am trying to do with my life possible here, but that is just a little background on why I found this museum to be so interesting, and why I am asking some of the questions I am asking… not at all expecting to find answers, just musing and wondering.
So this museum is full of objects which have come from all over the world, from the four corners of the earth, as I mentioned before. There are four sections, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, and the objects are organized geographically by region, and then within the regions as well. So that is how they are organized, but what I was really interested in (perhaps more than even the objects themselves) was how they are presented. It is the philosophy of the museum, or at least the philosophy they have adopted for presenting the objects, that things on display are art objects… Art with a capital A. They are presented like paintings, or sculpture in any other museum you would visit, with wall text that says where they are from and when, generally from which people or tribe they originate from, but that is it. In a way I think that this type of presentation is a way of trying to honor the objects, to present them as western art, since the museum wants them to be accepted and respected, and viewed through a lens which suggests that these objects are art objects like a painting by Monet, or something comparable. So in that respect I think that the museum has done the objects and honor, and attempts to display these once ‘primitive’ art objects on the same plane as western art objects to communicate just that- that they are equal to western Art objects. So good for you Musee de Quai Branly.
But on the other hand, and not to be overly critical, but just to ask the question… are these objects strictly art objects as they are being presented? Not exactly. A lot of the objects on display were taken from these parts of the world during the colonial period because they were considered to be oddities, or something like that, and then when their collectors died, they came into the possession of the state. But the cultures they came from were not then respected or thought about, the objects were simply stolen
for the pleasure of the west… but these objects had very different social lives before they were taken… they were used for religious ceremonies, or in people’s homes or to commemorate the dead. They had many different uses and purposes… and while they are often beautifully sculpted and adorned… they were not Art objects in the way that westerners think of Art objects. And so does it do them justice to present them as such a couple hundred years later in Paris France? Is it really an accurate representation of the object? Or the culture, or the person who made the object? Is it acceptable to take out all anthropological aspects of an object… to not tell people what it was used for and what culture it comes from… I know that the museum is an art museum, but the objects they have on display are not all specifically Art objects… so are they doing them justice? Are they in fact telling a non-truth, lying by omission? Am I way over thinking this? I don’t know. I am sure that the museum went to great lengths to decide how exactly they were going to do these things… to show their permanent collections as art. They are in fact an art museum, not a natural history museum… but does that work? I was walking around there asking Matt these thousands of questions (he is very patient with my inquiries sometimes) and I realized that I was much more interested in how the objects were being displayed than in the objects themselves. I then tried to take a step back, to take in what I was seeing and where I was, and to ask the questions later… but I still have these questions, and I think I am going to write to Professor Hollowell to ask her what she thinks. But seeing that museum and asking these questions definitely makes me want to explore these questions more, and it reaffirms for me that I am going in the right direction for my life.
This has turned out to be a random post, but there is more to come I am sure, and I love being here, and being able to go to these museums, and ask these questions, begin to struggle through some of this stuff here and now… because the questions aren’t going away, and I want to find the answers… or at least solutions.
hi dear - you have to love a country that loves its students so much it even gives them discount tickets to go to the movies! paris is your oyster, my dear - you have made it yours! your review of the Branly is gripping - we'll need to add it to our list of things to see in paris. how much of the colonial history is revealed in the wall text? modern museums have set up a duel/duality between art and history that exists rarely anywhere else: art is supposed to transcend, sometimes even redeem, (the injustice of) history. we need to question if art ever can or should do that. i always think of tavy's comments about "voice" - who's getting to say what about whom? that's where the museum of the american indian in d.c. is so terrific - the people who made the objects get to speak. also, they include contemporary art (there was an exhibit of skateboard art (how youth decorate their skateboards!) when we were there). all this to day, brava, and you have me filled with curiosity. i hope that the Musée Guimet makes it onto your list (Asian Art - a whole other French colonial "love affair" - Indochine!). thanks for this great blog!
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