Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly

by Sally Price

In 1990 Jacques Chirac, the future president of France and a passionate fan of non-European art, met Jacques Kerchache, a maverick art collector with the lifelong ambition of displaying African sculpture in the holy temple of French culture, the Louvre. Together they began laying plans, and ten years later African fetishes were on view under the same roof as the Mona Lisa . Then, in 2006, amidst a maelstrom of controversy and hype, Chirac presided over the opening of a new museum dedicated to primitive art in the shadow of the Eiffel the Musée du Quai Branly.

Paris Primitive recounts the massive reconfiguration of Paris’s museum world that resulted from Chirac’s dream, set against a backdrop of personal and national politics, intellectual life, and the role of culture in French society. Along with exposing the machinations that led to the MQB’s creation, Sally Price addresses the thorny questions it raises about the legacy of colonialism, the balance between aesthetic judgments and ethnographic context, and the role of institutions of art and culture in an increasingly diverse France. Anyone with a stake in the myriad political, cultural, and anthropological issues raised by the MQB will find Price’s account fascinating.

Genres: Anthropology, Art, Nonfiction

239 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Grace Fisher]

Fascinating/upsetting book on the creation of two African art museums in Paris - the [very small] section in the Louvre and the Quai Branly. Highly recommend for anyone interested in museums, art history, French views on art and non-European art/artifacts, racism...

[Lea]

Very interesting work about the museum and how non-european art is exhibited in Europe.

[Shannon]

A very thorough and interesting history of the creation of a "Primitive Arts" museum in Paris. It follows from the first meeting of the two creators of the museum and discusses their ideas about non-Western art and how it should be displayed and exhibited. The book can get a bit slow, especially in the couple of chapters where Price discusses the history of some of the other museums in Paris. All of the museums have French and English names, and acronyms and it gets a little complicated. But, overall, it is a very good and incredibly interesting book especially if you are interested in art and how art is displayed, or in anthropology and the treatment of artifacts from other cultures in European settings.

[Gretta]

Fabulous! A wonderful critical look at at both the museum and French culture.