Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, France

The musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, France, features the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The museum collection has 450,000 objects, of which 3,500 are on display at any given time, in both permanent and temporary thematic exhibits. A selection of objects from the museum is also displayed in the Pavillon des Sessions of the Louvre Museum.

The Quai Branly Museum opened in 2006, and is the newest of the major museums in Paris. It received 1.3 million visitors in 2015. It is jointly administered by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and serves as both a museum and a center for research. The Musée du quai Branly is located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, close to the Eiffel Tower and the Pont de l’Alma. The nearest métro and RER stations are Alma – Marceau and Pont de l’Alma.

In the heart of Paris’s museum land, neighbouring the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, a few minutes from the Grand and Petit Palais, the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac has an exceptional location on the banks of the River Seine, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. The arts of Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas now form part of the historical and artistic grand tour of the capital. The Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac is an innovative cultural institution – museum, educational and research centre, and public living space all in one. Built on one of the last available sites in the heart of Paris, the architectural design of this original project is the work of Jean Nouvel.

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, plus ten thousand recently acquired objects. The permanent collection has 300,000 works, 700,000 photographs, 320,000 documents, 10,000 musical instruments, and 25,000 pieces of textile or clothing. The main collections area displays about 3500 objects, rotating 500 each year. The museum has both permanent exhibits and large exhibits which change every six months. The museum also has thematic exhibits featuring masks and tapa cloth from Oceania, costumes from Asia, and musical instruments and textiles from Africa.

Temporary exhibits at the Museum touch upon a wide variety of subjects and themes. Themes of the exhibits in the summer of 2014 included the history and culture of tattoos, propaganda posters from Vietnam, and an exhibit about the influence of the culture of Oceania on American popular culture in the 20th century. This last exhibit, called “Tiki Pop”, featured films, posters, music, clothing, and a recreation of a Polynesia-themed “tiki bar” from the 1960s.
The museum has notable collections of objects from gathered during the French colonization of North America, from Quebec to Louisiana, in the 17th and 18th centuries, and also on the role of women voyagers in the 18th and 19th centuries. It also has a notable collection of paintings by Aboriginal Australians, in particular paintings made on eucalyptus tree bark.

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A small selection of the collected objects of the museum is regularly displayed in the Pavillon des Sessions of the Louvre Museum.

During the 20th century, non-Western arts started to be seen in museum collections. This development was largely thanks to cubist and fauvist artists, influenced by writers and critics from Apollinaire to Malraux, and in the wake of the work of such great anthropologists as Claude Lévi-Strauss. The idea of opening a museum in Paris in 2006, entirely devoted to the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and America gave shape to a worthy ambition – to enable a whole range of viewpoints, from the ethnologist’s to the art historian’s, to be brought to bear upon the artefacts in question, and bring official recognition to the place occupied by civilisations and cultural heritages of peoples often held apart from global culture today. Under the august patronage of UNESCO, the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac has already welcomed over 3.5 million enthusiastic visitors to the Pavillon des Sessions, its ‘branch’ at the Musée du Louvre, since the year 2000.

The museum has a library with 3 main departments:
the book collection, with 2 reading rooms—a research reading room on the top floor and a popular reading room on the ground floor.

the picture collection with photographs and drawings, the archive collection, The library also holds collections from important ethnologists, including Georges Condominas, Françoise Girard, and Nesterenko, as well as that of art collector Jacques Kerchache.

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