The ancient souls of modern art: Musée du Quai Branly

The Paris museum of indigenous culture, Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, was created to showcase the art and artefacts of non-Western civilisations. In the classical art paradise of Paris, visitors tend to focus on European painters and cultural history, and less on the cultures that heavily influenced modern movements like Cubism and Impressionism.

The museum is built around the concept of a ‘river’ of human history. Before entering the main body of the museum you walk down a path with names of the countries and peoples of the museum exhibits projected ‘flowing’ along the floor.

The river theme continues inside the museum proper, guiding visitors along a passage resembling a canyon or a dry riverbed. This ‘river’ is lined with installations, maps and interactive displays that are especially engaging to the visually impaired: the maps have raised topography, for example.

The notes on statues invite you to feel for special features, and you can listen to recordings of certain instruments of the era.

We were absolutely overwhelmed by the abundance of artefacts and the way that they were displayed — like a cave of treasures that each told a story.

Aside from the anting-anting exhibit, the main feature at the museum during our visit was the Oceania exhibit, telling the story of the widespread seafaring peoples who formed not only the geographic Oceania region but surrounding archipelagos in Southeast and part of East Asia.

Sacred objects from various island cultures were displayed with some of the canoes that enabled the various island kingdoms to trade across miles of ocean. There were also photos of indigenous citizens practicing rituals in more recent times, showing how they keep their traditions alive even today.

Paintings and weavings from earlier aboriginal societies hung on the walls alongside the work of contemporary indigenous artists, who spoke in their own words about their vision and culture.

There were several displays of Philippine tribal objects, mostly from the northern Cordillera tribes: bracelets, headdresses and necklaces.

We watched slideshows of tribe members actually wearing some of these — objects in living use, instead of isolated in a glass case distant from their own culture.

Together these artefacts present not only the rich visual life that inspired the early European Modernists and kicked off countless art movements, but remind us that these cultures are still living and thriving today. It’s far more enlightening to see these cultures through the eyes of their own people.

Originally published at wonderwanderwomen.blogspot.com on April 4, 2019.