The (Disastrous/Spectacular) Musée du Quai Branly Opens in Paris

There's a new museum in Paris. Actually, it's more like an architectural landmark, placed strategically on the Seine beneath the Eiffel Tower. It took eleven years, and EUR 232 million, but at the June 20 inauguration of the new Musée du Quai Branly, the world's gaze settled on what is hoped to be the hottest new thing in Paris. After all, the Musée du Quai Branly represents the crowning cultural achievement of Chirac's long reign; he has sought to create a space honoring, um, "the world's forgotten civilizations." (And the museum will soon be named for him. Like his predecessors, Chirac wants to achieve political triumph through a grand and costly Parisian landmark.)

The museum houses the 270,000 items from the African, Oceanic and Asian artworks from the Musée de l’Homme and the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens (only 3,500 are on display.)

And the architect, Jean Nouvel, succeeded in creating a masterpiece. The building itself is extraordinary: a piece of contemporary art beneath the Eiffel Tower, situated on 19 acres of green, sprawling along the Seine. It is disjointed: a colorful mass of metal and red walls, standing on stilts, with curved glass walls and no sense of symmetry. (One wall is made entirely of exotic plants.) It is distinctly modern. Standing within the gardens, or in the ticket line beneath the building's metal overhang, you catch glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, which seems to rise directly from the museum itself.

Though the lines of tourists assemble outside the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay in the summertime, the Musée du Quai Branly is a breeze. It's only Frenchies who are curious about Chirac's new project. Upon entrance, visitors follow a long white ramp where a kaleidoscope of images is projected. Once you enter the Collections area, the light is dim (practically dark), and the museum experience is an interactive one. You walk through a corridor lined with soft walls that are meant to be touched, called La Riviere, where indigenous stories and folklore are narrated for handicapped visitors. The museum is meant to be a place of ongoing exploration of anthropology and non-Western civilizations.

Unfortunately, the presentation of the Collections fails miserably. It is chaos. Visitors walk from Oceania-- where glass cases of strange tribal artifacts are often not labeled, or explained-- into Africa, Asia, and America. A maze of haphazard objects. I couldn't help but think: This is a terribly ill-conceived effort at the better understanding of non-European civilizations. Objects, like curiosities, seem thrown together hastily. A pitiful homage to the "brown people" of the world. And are great civilizations like China, or Mali, really part of the "forgotten"?

Worse yet: the place isn't finished. They are still doing construction, the bathrooms are poorly marked in the dark basement, and in some places-- there are pieces of paper tacked above an exhibit, because the text hasn't yet been written on the exhibit wall.

Notably, the media has reported how the museum is an effort at appeasement of the African and Arab immigrant populations in France who have fallen through the cracks in the great State system. Perhaps, those groups-- leading the riots in the suburbs-- are really "the forgotten."

Hours: 10 am-6:30 pm, closed on Mondays. Tickets are EUR 8.50.
A word about the photos: the green wall of plants, and view of the Eiffel Tower through metal-mesh, were taken from inside the museum.

Fantastic related articles:
New York Times, For a New Paris Museum, Jean Nouvel Creates His Own Rules
Guardian UK, Musee des bogus arts