Musée du quai Branly

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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. It is named after its location (not after the physicist Édouard Branly).

Contents 1 History 1.1 Building 2 Exhibits 3 Australian Aboriginal artists 4 Controversy 5 See also 6 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 Gilles Clément and Patrick Blanc. The "living wall" at installation was quite healthy and vibrant, however, over time, the inadequate support system for the plants roots, irrigation and drainage have become visually evident. 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 national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie and the ethnographic department of the Musée de l'Homme. The museum contains 267,000 objects in its permanent collection, of which 3,500 items from the collection are on display.

v • d • e Museums with major collections of Asian Art Forbidden City *, Beijing, China 1,000,000 objects [1] National Palace Museum *, Taipei, Taiwan 700,000 objects [1] National Museum of China *¹, Beijing, China 620,000 objects [2] Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK 160,000 objects [3] National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea 150,000 objects [4] Shanghai Museum *, China 120,000 objects [5] National Museum ², Japan 120,000 objects [6] British Library ³, London, UK 90,000 objects [7] [8] British Museum, London, UK 75,000 objects [9] [10] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA 60,000 objects [11]] Musée du quai Branly, Paris, France 58,000 objects [12] Musee Guimet, Paris, France ~50,000 objects [13] Museum of Fine Arts **, Boston, USA ~40,000 objects [14] Horniman Museum, London, UK 32,000 objects [15] Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, Germany 20,000 objects [16] Art Institute of Chicago ***, USA 35,000 objects [17] Freer Gallery of Art / Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., USA 18,200 objects [18] Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA 17,000 objects [19] Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, USA 10,450 objects [20] Please Note - * : These three museum's specialise in only Chinese items, the collections are not comprehensive for all Asia - *¹ National Museum of China: Includes contemporary collections, science & technology and decorative arts, however the vast majority derives from the Imperial collection, divided between Beijing and the National Palace Museum, Taipei - ² National Museum: This includes the combined holdings of the three museums that make up the National Museum, i.e. Tokyo National Museum, Kyoto National Museum, Nara National Museum - ³ British Library: No sculptures or architecural elements, the world's largest collection of ancient manuscripts from Asia, including the Stein Collection - Misleading Collection: ² Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Asian collection includes books, prints, postcards and modern paraphernalia, website indicates a massive collection, which is misleading - Misleading Collection: ³ Art Institute of Chicago: The Near & Middle East objects are included within the scope of the collection, overinflates size. n.b. it should be noted that this list is controversial, in so far as it contains only qualitative analysis of museum holdings. These may or may not reflect actual artistic quality of collections in question.

v • d • e Museums with major collections in Ethnography and Anthropology Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK 500,000 objects [21] British Museum, London, UK 350,000 objects [22] Musée du quai Branly, Paris, France 196,488 objects [23] Horniman Museum, London, UK 58,000 objects [24] Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, Austria 200,000 objects [25] Ethnologisches Museum¹, Berlin, Germany 500,000 objects [26] Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich, Germany 150,000 objects [27] Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA 11,000 objects [28] Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology², California, USA 634,000 objects [29] American Museum of Natural History Division of Anthropology, New York, USA 119,000 objects [30] Misleading Collections :- ¹ETHNOLOGISCHES MUSEUM - In addition to Africa, Americas & Oceania, the museum embraces holdings from Asia (South, South-East, Far-East and North Asia), the Islamic World, the Children's Museum and the Museum for the Blind. PHOEBE HEARST MUSEUM² - In addition to Africa, Americas & Oceania, the museum embraces holdings from Europe, Ancient Mediterranean, Ancient Egypt, Asia and a large media collection

[edit] Australian Aboriginal artists

Australian indigenous artists represented at the Museum include Kathleen Petyarre (Utopia), Paddy Bedford (Warmun), John Mawurndjul (Arnhem Land), Ningura Napurrula (Papunya Tula), Lena Nyadbi (Warmun), Michael Riley (urban), Judy Watson Napangardi (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

Stéphane Martin, the director of the Quai Branly museum, has recently been involved in controversy over the return of Maori warrior heads held in France. This was brought up after a museum in Normandy France was doing a respectable gesture by returning this tattooed head of a Maori warrior. Since 1992, the Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand's national museum, has requested the return of Maori remains held around the world - which were a result of international body trafficking. Unfortunately Christine Albanel, the culture minister stepped into to stop the return of human remains to its tribe in New Zealand. Mr Martin boasted about holding four Maori heads in their collection and has refused to return these back to the New Zealand tribes and ideally to allow for proper burials. Stating "“They are stored in a very special area, and absolutely will not be put on public display”. This goes against France’s bioethics law, that a body part must be returned to its place of origin.

Quai Branly has received criticism for a perceived reliance on visual appeal and theatrics, as opposed to explanation and context, in its exhibitions. [31]

Australian Art Market Report Issue 23 Autumn 2007 Pages 32-34: "Twelve months after the opening of Musée du quai Branly in Paris, journalist Jeremy Eccles takes a look at what effect, if any, the museum" (where contemporary Aboriginal art forms an integral 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 Committee of the International Council of Museums. She told a Sydney symposium on 'Australian Arts in an International Context' that she found the whole of Quai Branly to be a "regressive museology" and the presentation of Aboriginal art "in a vegetal environment" to be "an exotic mise en scène" in the worst taste. "It can't be decontextualised into a glorious otherness"

[edit] See also

• List of museums in Paris

[edit] External links

• (French) (English) (Spanish) Musée du quai Branly
• Gradhiva, Journal of Anthropology and Museology at the Musée du Quai Branly
• Photos of Quai Branly Museum
• New York Times Article
• Musée du Quai Branly at Aboriginal Art Directory
• London Review of Books Article
• International Herald Tribune Article
• Photographs of Museum

Coordinates: 48°51′39″N, 2°17′51″E