I had a bit of a quieter weekend this week, I was still pretty tired from London.
On Saturday I visited the Quai Branly, Paris’s ethnographic museum. Now, I had heard some not so good things about this museum. That it was a continuation of the colonial exercise, that the othering of different cultures within it was obvious and blatant, that the poor museum practice and western gaze inherent in the exhibitions was blatant and imperialist, so I was all prepared to go in there and get my hate on.
boy did I hear wrong.
I can completely understand how people got those impressions, the museum definetly has some issues with the western gaze, but I think where most people fall down is in ther understnding of what the museum is trying to do. This is not a pure ethnographic museum that attempts to explore different cultures, this is a fine art museum that is dedicated to the artistic expresion of cultures that exist outside of the western European fine arts framework. Once you realise that then the small displays from each culture, the emphasis on form and function rather that construction, the examination of objects through a language of fine arts, all start to make sense. This museum is not attempting to catalouge or explore entire cultures, it is trying to explore the different artisitc traditions, living and dead, that make world cultures such a rich palimpsest.
The river installation at the start of the museum speak to this explicitly , it is a watercourse of words in light, it is the impulse that flows through all of humanity to create beauty in all of it’s myriad form, it is the stragness of seeing beauty through other lenses of culture, language, tradition and time.
I have not taken many photos because I was so caught up in the stories the museum was telling, stories of syncretism and multiple pathways, stories of imperialism and colonies and peacfull contact, stories of humans makig art. Seriously, I love this place. This is the kind of story I wish more museums would tell.
The other museum I visited on saturday was also cool, but in a very different way. The Musée national des Monuments Français (The national museum of French monuments) is a building full of bits of other buildings…
No. Really. This museum is full of plaster casts and replicas of the most famous buildings, and their interiors, in france, most at life size.
They even have a complete module apartment by Corbusier.
It is exceedingly strange, the discombobulation of walking from a modern halway into a Norman crypt is very difficult to describe and should be experienced by eveyone at least once in their life.
This place is at Trocadero, so it’s a quick walk from Quai Branly.
On Sunday I visited Musée national du Moyen Âge: Thermes et hôtel de Cluny (National Museum of the Middle Ages – Cluny thermal baths and mansion). The building that contains this museum is really interesting. Its oldest part is the remains of the 1st century roman baths and is the oldest standing roman structure in france north of the Loire, and it’s seriously big, the inside roof is 13.5 meters tall
In 1334 the Bishops of Cluny decided to build a mansion (hôtel) around the remains of the baths and incorporate them into the residence. This leads to some interesting architecture where you can see the intersection of roman and medieval building techniques
The displays of the museum range from Roman time to the 17th century but are focused on middle ages, with the bulk of the collection dating from the 8th to the 15th centuries. There are a lot of gold and fancy things, and an excellent tapestry collection including the famous ‘lady and the unicorn’ tapestries
but you know me, i like the weird stuff, like the carving of a rabbi circumcising Jesus, or a unicorn horn, or a plate of medieval hallmarks
and i like the every day stuff, that tells stories about how people actually lived, like the Jewish wedding ring with hebrew letters on it that shows how proud people were of their culutre, even while they were being persecuted, or the dice and games sets that tell a story about the ubiquity of play in human cultures, and the music they listend to, and the clothes they wore.
That was all for the weekend but toninght I’m , finally, going to the Louvre, and on the weekend to Reims, so expect a long post next week.
And i’m going to be home in three weeks, so i’ll see you all soon