In Progress

Starting at the Cité de l’Immigration and moving on to the Musée du Quai Branly provides a route to understanding how the role of “primitive” art in France has changed over the past couple of decades. Originally the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens (and where much of the collection for the new Musée du Quai Branly came from), Cité de l’Immigration is a slightly faded building located on the outskirts of Paris. The frescos in the foyer are enormously striking, but viewers may find it difficult to connect more deeply with the imagery and ideas contained within, with little historical context given for the work. The portrayals of labor and colonialism are left to color the experience of the immigration collection on the floors above without explanation.

Moving up the stairs to the permanent collection, the space becomes radically different. This is not one of Paris’ star museums, the collection is modestly sized and displayed. Going to the website later, I discovered that it was divided into three categories: photographs, objects, and artistic representations. And this is what I found most problematic about an otherwise earnest exhibit: the collection is divided by physical nature rather than tied into a more cohesive historical context.

The historical aspects of immigration are covered, in embedded videos and some placards, but the information is often situated away from the relevant items in the collection. If we examine the collection as trying to create what Pierre Nora calls a meaningful lieu de mémoire about immigration, it is difficult to count it a resounding success, although it has its moments. Personal family histories dominate the collection, which offers a more positive representation of immigration than is often found in French discourse around the topic. But without an abundance of contextual information or experiential exhibits, I found it a muted impression of objects and photos that evoke a vague sense of some of the powerful travel histories that have shaped the contemporary world.

The Musee du Quai Branly on the other hand, offers a shock to the senses. The museum is located in the heart of Paris, very close to the Eiffel Tower, signaling a deliberate move from the outskirts of the city to give more prominence to the collection. In many ways, the design of the museum overshadows the objects housed in it. Joan Gonchar describes the organizing principle of the museum’s architect Jean Nouvel in Architectural Record: “In place of a customary museum environment, Nouvel has created a “fictional map” with the collections organized by geographic origin.”

When a building is specifically commissioned for a project, rather than repurposed, it is often as important an object of analysis as the collection itself, carrying as it does messages about both the use and nature of what it houses. In the case of Quai Branly, many surveyors have derived the same message, but interpreted positively or negatively depending on the critic. In a fairly representative piece, Tom Hennes writes in Curator that the museum environment is “unabashedly self-assertive” in its exoticization and othering of the cultures represented within.

The entrance is itself a testament to the nature of the experience. From the very white, very well-lit lobby, a long, winding passage gradually transitions to a deeper, darker, tunnel that takes viewers to the collection, which is presented in a spooky and dramatically lit space that can be confusing to navigate. As Sally Price mentions in “Art of Darkness,” the transition is reminiscent of Conrad’s allegorical novel Heart of Darkness. The transition from light to dark, from the civilization of the lobby to the “jungle” of the interior, can be seen as both regressive and patronizing.

But the artifacts presented within are displayed with the very best of intentions, in that they are beautifully lit, staged with care, and, as our guide explained, preserved with the utmost integrity for a long life. But as Sally Price points out, some exhibits are presented in “tight little cages” which evoke a sense of peep show around the figures.

As for context, again, the museum seems to miss the mark entirely. As is discussed in “Glass, Gardens, and Aborigines,” social criticism is rarely even hinted at throughout the space. Hennes notes that the little explanation that is offered is most often derived from iconic anthropologists and other thinkers of the late colonial period of the 1920s and 30s. To quote primarily from Western thinkers like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Margaret Mead, who were still rooted in a colonial world and have been interrogated for problematic worldviews in more recent times, is to remain rooted in a tradition of exoticizing “primitive” cultures – even if the name “Museum of Premiere Arts” was dropped in favor of Quai Branly.

In fact, the choice of name itself is presented in a revealing way. Our guide explained that to call it primitive was considered insulting so the name Quai Branly was adopted because “it means nothing.” This lack of meaning, or void, is an apt metaphor for what Quai Branly ultimately offers. While the objects are undeniably beautiful and treated with care, any use value or other tradition associated with it is discarded into a void. The fact that no other name could be chosen is indicative of the problematized environment of how the Western world, particularly France, chooses to engage with the rest of the world, by removing it behind glass walls to explore as something alien.

This is further highlighted by the fact that the artifacts of Europe are noticeably missing from the collection. Had the curators decided to include cultures of Europe in the same way, brought into the same setting, the display wouldn’t feel one-sided in its relentlessly superficial and aestheticized approach. But such objects remain at the Louvre, and retain an aura of celebrity and respectability that is comfortably within the same old traditions. Instead the collection at Quai Branly feels part of a long tradition of colonial exploration and conquest. As Sally Price discusses, exhibition of cultural difference was intimately linked to “the celebration of nationalism, colonial conquest, and the civilizing mission.”

Finally, while the uncomfortable juxtaposition of a Tarzan exhibit upstairs (again, strikingly and creatively displayed) was in keeping with the overall blindness to context of the museum, there was one object in particular that stood out to me: this ad for Lavazza coffee.

Displayed as if it were just another object in the exhibit, the ad presents a seemingly European woman on all fours snarling at the camera wearing a small fur, while two cherubic infants are staged in a position to suckle—even if the babies seem more bemused by the setting than ready to feed. The ad is for coffee, and draws on the Romulus and Remus myth of Italian origin, cleverly tying into the Tarzan exhibit. The museum’s commercialization of their displays is almost less offensive than their willingness to include an ad with the same tired tropes of exoticization, hypersexualization, and objectification, again with no discussion of the appropriateness of such a juxtaposition with the collection downstairs.

Posted on July 11th, 2009 by DeepthiW
Filed under: Art, Global Culture, Media, Politics, School, Uncategorized