The Musée du quai Branly (my.ze dy ke bʁan.li), known in English as the Quai Branly Museum, nicknamed MQB, is a museum in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 that features indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Oceania

Oceania

Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

, and the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

. The museum is located at 37, quai Branly - portail Debilly, 75007 Paris, France, situated close to the Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...

. The nearest métro and RER stations are Alma – Marceau and Pont de l'Alma

Pont de l’Alma (Paris RER)

Pont de l'Alma is a station in line C of the Paris Region's express suburban rail system, the RER. The station is situated in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. Alma - Marceau on Paris Métro Line 9 is located on the other side of the Pont de l'Alma.-Tourism:...

. It is named after its location which in turn is named after the physicist Édouard Branly

Edouard Branly

Édouard Eugène Désiré Branly was a French inventor, physicist and professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris. He is primarily known for his early involvement in wireless telegraphy and his invention of the Branly coherer around 1890.-Biography:The coherer was the first widely used detector for...

.

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. The curved site on the edge of the Quai Branly and the Seine is situated 100 metres from the Eiffel Tower. The site was previously selected to accommodate the Centre International de Conferences, an abandoned Grand Projet of François Mitterrand

Grands Projets of François Mitterrand

The Grands Projets of François Mitterrand was an architectural program to provide modern monuments in Paris, the city of monuments, symbolizing France’s role in art, politics, and economy at the end of the 20th century...

. French President Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac

Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...

 was a very influential proponent of the project. Quai Branly opened on June 23, 2006. For the whole story of the MQB (and the introduction of "primitive art" to the Louvre Museum), see Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by Sally Price (2007).

Building

The building was designed by architect Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture...

. The "green wall" (200m long by 12m high) on part of the exterior of the museum was designed and planted by Gilles Clément and Patrick Blanc

Patrick Blanc

Patrick Blanc is a botanist, working at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, where he specializes in plants from tropical forests...

. At installation this was quite healthy and vibrant; however, in winter, the direct exposure of the plants to north winds blowing over the open expanse of the Seine river causes regular frost damage even though the support system for the plants' roots, irrigation and drainage has proved to be perfectly adequate on the less exposed east facade of the building and in other places in Paris where it is used (BHV Homme 38, rue de la Verrerie, etc...http://www.google.fr/images?q=patrick+blanc&rls=com.microsoft:fr:IE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7HPEB_fr&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&sa=X&ei=sBWXTaaXMdGwhAfdrLjiCA&ved=0CD4QsAQ&biw=975&bih=716). The museum complex contains several buildings, as well as a multimedia library and a garden. The museum's frontage facing onto quai Branly features very tall glass panelling which allows its interior gardens to be remarkably quiet only metres from the busy street in front of them.

Exhibits

The museum contains the collections of the now-closed Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie

Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie

The Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie was a museum formerly located in the Palais de la Porte Dorée on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes at 293, avenue Daumesnil in the XIIe arrondissement, Paris, France....

 and the ethnographic

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 department of the Musée de l'Homme

Musée de l'Homme

The Musée de l'Homme was created in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. It is the descendant of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, founded in 1878...

. The museum contains 267,000 objects in its permanent collection, of which 3,500 items from the collection are on display. A part of it is now exhibit at the Pavillon des Sessions of the musée du Louvre, where the master pieces are such as "l'homme de fer".

The museum has also an important library with 3 main departments :

• book collection with 2 reading rooms : a research reading room at the top floor and a popular reading room at the ground floor
• picture collection with photographs and drawings
• archive collection

The library has collections from important ethnologists such as Georges Condominas

Georges Condominas

Georges Louis Condominas was a French cultural anthropologist. He is best known for his field studies of the Mnong people of Vietnam.-Biography:...

, Françoise Girard, Nesterenko, or art trader such as Jacques Kerchache.

Australian Aboriginal artists

Australian indigenous artists represented in the 2006 Australian Indigenous Art Commission at the Museum include Paddy Bedford

Paddy Bedford

Paddy Bedford was a major contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from Warmun in the Kimberley, and one of eight Australian artists selected for an architectural commission for the Musée du Quai Branly....

 (Kija), John Mawurndjul

John Mawurndjul

John Mawurndjul is an Australian contemporary Indigenous artist. Mawurndjul's artwork is highly regarded internationally. He uses traditional motifs in innovative ways to express spiritual and cultural values....

 (Kunwinjku), Ningura Napurrula (Pintupi

Pintupi

Pintupi refers to an Australian Aboriginal group who are part of the Western Desert cultural group and whose homeland is in the area west of Lake MacDonald and Lake Mackay in Western Australia. These people moved into the Aboriginal communities of Papunya and Haasts Bluff in the west of the...

), Lena Nyadbi (Kija), Michael Riley

Michael Riley

Michael Riley is a Canadian actor and graduate of the National Theatre School in Montreal, Canada in 1984. Riley's first appearance was in the film No Man's Land...

 (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi)|, Judy Watson (Waanji), Tommy Watson (artist) (Pitjantjatjara) and Gulumbu Yunupingu

Gulumbu Yunupingu

Gulumbu Yunupingu is an Aboriginal artist and women's leader from the Yolngu people who live in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia. She is a member of the Gumatj clan and speaks the Gumatj language. She was born between 1943 and 1947 in Biranybirany, in North-east Arnhem Land...

 (Gumatj). There are many Aboriginal artists represented in the collection, including Mawurndjul.

Controversy

Stéphane Martin, the director of the Quai Branly museum, has recently been involved in controversy over the return of Maori warrior heads

Mokomokai

Mokomokai are the preserved heads of Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, where the faces have been decorated by tā moko tattooing. They became valuable trade items during the Musket Wars of the early 19th century.-Moko:...

 held in France. The controversy arose after a museum in Normandy decided to return a tattooed head of a Maori warrior to New Zealand. Since 1992, the Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand's national museum, has requested the return of Maori remains held around the world and which were a result of international artefact trafficking.
However, Christine Albanel, the culture minister, stepped in to prevent the return of human remains to the relevant tribe in New Zealand.
Mr Martin has boasted of holding four Maori heads in the collection and has refused to return these to the New Zealand tribes for proper burial, stating that “They are stored in a very special area, and absolutely will not be put on public display”.
Nevertheless, this goes against France’s bioethics law, which states that a body part must be returned to its place of origin.

Quai Branly has also received criticism for a perceived reliance in its exhibitions on visual appeal and theatrics, as opposed to explanation and context. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=9406E4D81730F931A35754C0A9609C8B63&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fN%2fNouvel%2c%20Jean

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".

On more general terms, discontent with the MQB is based on its blunt disdain for the post-colonial reinterpretation of Western history which has developed since the 1970s and which has ultimately affected museums and changed curatorial practices. http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_2_no2/papers/narratives_of_colonisation/

External links

• Musée du quai Branly (site in French, English and Spanish)
• The Musée du Quai Branly - architect: Jean Nouvel - a case study on Constructalia
• Sally Price, Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
• Gradhiva, Journal of Anthropology and Museology at the Musée du Quai Branly
• New York Times Article
• London Review of Books Article
• International Herald Tribune Article
• "Narratives of Colonisation: the Musée du Quai Branly in context", in "reCollections", Journal of the National Museum of Australia, vol.2, n°2, September 2007.
• http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_2_no2/papers/