Quai Branly

Yesterday I headed out to the Quai Branly museum, which prides itself on its exhibits of art from around the world but especially from Africa and Oceania. When you enter the museum, you have to walk through a mock rainforest, complete with recorded birdsong. The Eiffel Tower in the distance does remind you where you are, though...



Most of the art itself is totally awesome. You can look at everything from masks to bark paintings to human skulls. The one with the chainsaw-like shape protruding from it is, according to the guidebook, the skull of an enemy kept as a trophy. The one with the red nose is the skull of an ancestor, kept for protection.



My favorite part of the museum was, surprise surprise, the section where they had some Christian art from Ethiopia! It was awesome, especially because I could recognize certain elements from other Christian art I've seen. There were equestrian saints and Jesus making his usual hand gesture that you can find in Coptic and in some medieval icons. It basically means, "Blessings, yo."



The museum's stated mission is to shine the spotlight on other cultures (i.e. non-Western cultures) as a show of solidarity and appreciation. There is art from multiple time periods, from China, Japan, Africa, and South America. The museum also displays Native American artifacts from North America. I'm not sure how I felt about the categorization and display, though -- there wasn't any historical context, really, and really ancient stuff (such as Ethiopic art) was placed directly across from objects from a totally different place and time period. Some of the videos of rituals in Africa were modern (people were wearing dated clothing from the 70s) and there was very little idea of ritual development over time. There was also a special exhibit on Tarzan going on, which I did not check out, but... the implied idea that we are looking at primitive objects when we look at art from other cultures made me uncomfortable. The stuff itself is great.