Musée du quai Branly

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View of the outside of Musée du quai Branly

The Musée du quai Branly, known in English as the Quai Branly Museum, nicknamed MQB, is a museum in Paris, France that features indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The museum is located at 37, quai Branly - portail Debilly, 75007 Paris, France, situated close to the Eiffel Tower.

1 History
- 1.1 Building
2 Exhibits
3 Australian Aboriginal artists
4 Controversy
5 External links

[edit] History

A commission was established to study the feasibility of building the museum in 1995. When the study was concluded, land was reserved near the Eiffel Tower for the future museum. French President Jacques Chirac was a very influential proponent of the project. Quai Branly opened on June 23, 2006.

[edit] Building

The building was designed by architect Jean Nouvel. The "living wall" (200m long by 12m tall) on part of the exterior of the museum was designed and planted by Patrick Blanc. The museum complex contains several buildings, as well as a mediatheque and a garden.

[edit] Exhibits

The museum contains the collections of the now-closed Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens and the ethnographic department of the Musée de l'Homme. The museum contains over 300,000 objects in its permanent collection and has 10 special exhibits every year. 3,500 items from the collection are on display.

[edit] Australian Aboriginal artists

Australian indigenous artists represented at the Museum include Paddy Bedford (Warmun), John Mawurndjul (Arnhem Land), Ningura Napurrula (Papunya Tula), Lena Nyadbi (Warmun), Michael Riley (urban), Judy Watson (urban), Tommy Watson (Papunya) and Gulumbu Yunupingu (Yirrkala). In the case of Ningura Napurrula, her signature black and white motif appear superimposed on the ceiling of the administration side of the museum's building.

[edit] Controversy

Quai Branly has received criticism for a perceived reliance on visual appeal and theatrics, as opposed to explanation and context, in its exhibitions. [1]

Australian Art Market Report Issue 23 Autumn 2007 Pages 32-34: "Twelve months after the opening of Musee du quay Branly in Paris, journalist Jeremy Eccles takes a look at what effect, if any, the museum" (where contemporary Aboriginal art forms an itegral part of the architectural structure) " has had on .... Aboriginal art"

In this article he quotes Bernice Murphy - co-founder of the Sydney MCA and now National Director of Museums Australia and Chair of the Ethics Commitee of the International Coucil of Museums. She told a Sydney symposium on 'Australian Arts in an International Context' that she found the whole of Quay Branly to be a "regressive museology" and the presentation of our Aboriginal art "in a vegetal environment" to be "an exotic mise en scene" in the worst taste. "here our is from a contemporarypolitical environment. It can't be decontextualised into a glorious otherness"