MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY

Description

Essentials about the Musée du quai Branly in brief

Just a few steps from the Eiffel Tower and the Champ de Mars, right on the river Seine, is one of Paris’ newest museums: the Musée du quai Branly (named after the street of the same name). Those interested in non-Western civilizations should not miss France’s national museum of non-European art. It is considered the world’s most important collection of art and culture from Africa, Asia, America and Oceania.

The history of the Musée du quai Branly

The museum is the result of a private initiative by art dealer Jacques Kerchache, who in the early 1990s campaigned to give non-European art access to the Louvre. Through his acquaintance with then French President Jacques Chirac, he was able to bring about the creation of a department for non-European art at the Louvre. A year later, President Chirac announced the creation of a separate museum for art from non-Western civilizations. The Musée du quai Branly was finally inaugurated in 2006.

The building of the Musée du quai Branly

Designed by French star architect Jean Nouvel, the brilliant museum complex with a total of four buildings is certainly one of the most unusual and eye-catching in all of Paris. From the outside, visitors are “greeted” by a huge glass wall and an 800-square-meter plant wall. The museum’s main gallery, which dominates with a length of over 200 meters, is built on stilts and crosses a beautiful 18,000 square meter garden with trees, flower arrangements, hills and curved paths, inviting museum visitors to inspiration and meditation.

The collections of the Musée du quai Branly

The collections of the Musée du quai Branly were brought together from several other exhibitions. The museum now houses a gigantic collection of some 300,000 objects, 700,000 photographs, 320,000 documents, 10,000 musical instruments and 25,000 items of clothing. However, the museum’s permanent collection can only display about 3,500 exhibits from this huge collection. In addition to the permanent collection, the Musée du quai Branly usually hosts two temporary exhibitions a year on a variety of topics from non-Western civilizations. Last but not least, it should be mentioned that the exhibitions at the Musée du quai Branly, in contrast to most ethnological museums worldwide, are explicitly not conceived according to ethnological aspects, but rather emphasize the artistic characteristics of the exhibits.