Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The Primal Moment ... has been documented as taking place in 1990 at the Royal Palm Hotel in Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. Jacques Chirac..." (more)
Key Phrases: hairy wall, future museum, Jacques Kerchache, Quai Branly, Germain Viatte (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Paris Primitive is a delicious combination of art, anthropology, and politics, as well as an intricate dissection of French alliances and institutions. Along the way, in this well-written and fast-paced narrative, Sally Price also illuminates the ethics of acquisition and display and the battle between aesthetics and ethnography. What a tale! Everyone involved in cultural representation should read this book."-Lucy R. Lippard, author of Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (Lucy R. Lippard 20070702)

"At once wry and serious, Paris Primitive offers a unique backstage look at the art world, French cultural politics, and the shifting value of other people's artifacts. The result combines a captivating story with rich anthropological analysis. If only all museums had a book like this!"-Peter W. Redfield, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Peter W. Redfield )

"Paris Primitive offers a wide-ranging, informed, and historically well-grounded analysis of the ideology that undergirds French cultural identity and its management of difference. Writing deftly and lightly, with an eye for the utterly telling anecdote, Sally Price avoids the pretensions that could overwhelm such a study and allows us to comprehend the building of a museum as an eminently human enterprise."-Fred Myers, New York University, author of Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art (Fred Myers )

"It takes a muckraker to piece together such a sordid tale, and Price is up to the challenge. By turns breezy, gossipy, provocative, insouciant, and aggravating, she is generally perspicacious, entertaining, and enlightening." (Choice )

"A crackling good story."--Museum (James Volkert Museum )

"This is a fascinating, entertaining, and troubling book. I read it in one (transatlantic) sitting and recommend it highly." (Lawrence Guy Straus Journal of Anthropological Research )

Product Description

In 1990 Jacques Chirac, the future president of France and a passionate fan of non-European art, met Jacques Kerchache, a maverick art collector with the lifelong ambition of displaying African sculpture in the holy temple of French culture, the Louvre. Together they began laying plans, and ten years later African fetishes were on view under the same roof as the Mona Lisa. Then, in 2006, amidst a maelstrom of controversy and hype, Chirac presided over the opening of a new museum dedicated to primitive art in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower: the Musée du Quai Branly.

Paris Primitive recounts the massive reconfiguration of Paris’s museum world that resulted from Chirac’s dream, set against a backdrop of personal and national politics, intellectual life, and the role of culture in French society. Along with exposing the machinations that led to the MQB’s creation, Sally Price addresses the thorny questions it raises about the legacy of colonialism, the balance between aesthetic judgments and ethnographic context, and the role of institutions of art and culture in an increasingly diverse France. Anyone with a stake in the myriad political, cultural, and anthropological issues raised by the MQB will find Price’s account fascinating.

(20070702)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; illustrated edition edition (October 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226680681
• ISBN-13: 978-0226680682
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,035,728 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not my cup of tea, January 31, 2009

By	J. B. Gwin "African art lover" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly (Paperback)

I was hoping this book would include lots of photographs of this outstanding museum and its incredible collection. I just didn't realize this book wasn't addressing my needs or I wouldn't have bought it. Having said that, it's a good book for what it does cover. You just need to understand what you're buying.

12 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE LOGIC OF NON-RESTITUTION OF CULTURAL GOODS, November 14, 2007

By	K. Opoku - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly (Paperback)

THE LOGIC OF NON-RESTITUTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS FROM THE MUSEE DU QUAI BRANLY.

I thought I had heard all the desperate arguments and explanations from European and American museum directors for not returning the stolen cultural objects which fill their museums. But on reading the recent excellent book from Sally Price, Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly I noted the incredible explanations she received from the officials of the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, which seem to me to be worthy of examination. Concerning the return of human remains, the author got the following remarkable explanation from Séverine Le Guével, head of the international relations at the museum:
"First, the bodies have never functioned as human remains. Secondly, they were (for the most part) given to the explorers who brought them back, not stolen or taken without permission. Plus, they're not identified. We don't know who they belong to. Thus, they've become art objects; ethnographic objects. That makes a difference. Therefore, they should be preserved like art objects and cannot be destroyed.... And it's also important to consider all objects that contain human remains. If we were to honour the claims for everything that contain human remains, it would mean giving away the entire collection of the Musee du Quai Branly anything that contains a bit of bone, anything that contains a skull...." (1)

Sally Price does not think it is really worthwhile to pursue ideas such as that there are some human remains in all the 350,000 objects in the museum. Nevertheless, I think it is at least worthwhile to ask how persons with such level of knowledge and competence reach such positions as head of international relations in the new French museum on the banks of the Seine. Little piety or respect for the dead seems to be shown by the lady who obviously has no feelings of sympathy for the relatives of those who disappeared or died in unexplained circumstances under colonial rule.
The same lady went on to add, according to the author that:
"We at the Quai Branly, as elsewhere in France, have decided to respect the principle of laicité [separation of church and state, very roughly equivalent to secularism]. Therefore, we do not take into consideration any claim based on religion or ethnicity. That's important.... We're a public institution, a secular institution operating in the public domain. If you allow the legitimacy of one religion, you allow them all, and then they all cancel each other out. That would put every place in the world on the same level!... Giving credit to all the claims would be to cancel out all of them....If you really believe that these things have a profound meaning, well the museum isn't made for that. The museum is not a religious space".

One can well sympathize with Sally Price for not wanting to spend
too many words on the substance of such statements but we must note
that these are the kind of people the Western countries have appointed as their representatives to deal with matters which are of great significance to the former colonized countries of Asia, Africa and America. Dr.Price, who is herself very sympathetic to claims of restitution, notes that in other countries these matters are dealt with
more seriously and sometimes even museums seek the advice of persons from the cultures being displayed exhibits. Further interviews of the author with more senior officials of the Musee du Quai Branly
did not reveal any better understanding of the questions of restitution
and the answers she received did not seem to differ much from those she received from the head of the international relations.
When she questioned the Director of the museum, Germain Viatte
about how the museum intended to deal with claims based on religion or ethnicity, she was informed how pleased non-Europeans were to see their cultural objects displayed in the museum; the director further declared:
"France is both universalist and secular. We need to recognize that [museum collections] belong to the history of our own country, but also to cultures that may have disappeared, or be on the way out, or hoping for cultural revival. We need to take all this into account, but without giving in to a kind of paternalism, confining other people to their particularities and reserving universalism exclusively for ourselves because we're worried about being "politically correct". We cannot give in to claims for restitution like those presented to the English for the Parthenon marbles or the Benin bronzes. But what we can do is set in motion international collaboration designed to find viable compromises between different, often incompatible interests, for example, between restitution and the protection of objects".(2)

This statement from the Director of the Musee du Quai Branly displays the same arrogance, paternalism and assumptions of superiority which we are used to hearing from other European museum directors. They assume they are rendering a great service to the countries of Asia, Africa and America by showing their stolen cultural objects in Europe. Surely, every art lover is pleased to see
an impressive piece of art displayed, whether that object is a stolen object from his or her country or from elsewhere. But does that mean
they approve of the unlawful methods the colonial masters used in acquiring these objects? Sally Price has described some of these criminal modes of acquisition in her book, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Second Edition, 2001.The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London). Can one accept peremptory statements such as "We cannot give in to claims for restitution like those presented to the English for the Parthenon marbles or the Benin bronzes" without even attempting to refer to their modes of acquisition? The museum director is no doubt aware of the Dakar-Djibouti expedition which through stealing, blackmail and duress, as described by Michel Leiris in L'Afrique Fantôme (1950, Paris, Gallimard), brought to France thousands of cultural objects from the French colonies. Most of these objects were inherited by the Musée du Quai Branly when it was established. The story of the establishment of this museum is well related in Paris Primitive. The French generally, and the Musée du Quai Branly in particular, have obviously decided not to talk too much
about their colonial history which throws a bad light on the museum's
inheritance from the two other museums it replaced: Musée de l'Homme and the Musée National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie.
The explanation of the President of the museum as cited by Sally Price is no more enlightening that the others cited above:
" We are not in the business of buying ourselves a clear conscience vis-a vis the non-Western world or becoming an "apology museum," relaying messages based on the heritages of [cultural/ethnic] communities the way museums in Canada and the United States do for Indians. In France we have a more a more objective vision of culture. It's free of all instrumentality (nationalistic, pedagogic, etc), though it's becoming more and more difficult to defend.... In my view, the argument for returning the contents of museums to their countries of origin is a rejection, pure and simple, of the museum's calling which is to show the "Other" which means, by definition: outside of its original environment.. Art objects are also ambassadors for their culture, and in that capacity they're an element in the dialogue between peoples." (3)

After this sort of statement, one is tempted to agree with Sally Price
that it is not worth pursuing further some of these ideas. However, an exploration of the impact of some of these ideas, if they were really followed through might cause surprises.
To try to use the idea of laicité to defeat claims for return of stolen cultural property seems to me very strange. The theory of separation of State and Church/Religion was invented to prevent the interference of the State in the affairs of the church and vice-versa. It was intended to prevent State officials from dealing with matters which may have a religious element and certainly it has not been used to prevent the police from pursuing thieves who have stolen religious objects from a church or a shop. The lady at the museum did not seem to realise that in restitution claims, we are dealing with questions of ownership and not primarily with the nature of the object. Whatever the nature of the object, an alleged aggrieved the owner has the right to pursue the claim.
If it were acceptable to reject claims for restitution on the ground that they are based on religion or ethnicity, most of the claims for the return of cultural objects would be easily rejected. There are very few cultural objects which do not have religious or cultural element. If you reason like the officials of the Musée du Quai Branly, you could in the last resort point out that the artist is a Catholic or belongs to the English tribe! Hardly any African sculpture could ever be recovered from the French who have thousands of these stolen items. Obviously, such weak arguments are developed for the protection of the French museum.
Apparently similar thinking processes are shared by many of the people associated with the museum. Sally Price cites the art dealer Jean Paul Barbier, a member of the acquisition committee of the museum who also sold to the museum a number of expensive art objects, as declaring in an interview with Radio France:

"Certain anthropologists claim that an African or Oceanian who's deprived of his fetishes is a person who dies spiritually. Well, that's not true! Man is much stronger than that! If you take away a Sicilian woman's crucifix that she inherited from... Read more ›