Sun, Sep 12, 2004 page19

• Paris goes primitive

  President Jacques Chirac will finish his term in office leaving behind a new museum dedicated to so-called primitive art

  • AP
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  Burnishing its reputation as a culture capital, Paris is getting a new museum -- an elegant elongated building near the Eiffel Tower -- for France's large and until now scattered collection of primitive art.

  The US$265 million Musee du Quai Branly, which builders are racing to complete for its February 2006 opening, is President Jacques Chirac's pet project. The fan and defender of indigenous cultures is following the footsteps of other French leaders in leaving his imprint on the City of Light.

  

  A US$265 million museum devoted to the indigenous art of the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania is rising on the banks of the Seine next to the Eiffel Tower. Shown above is an Alaskan mask to be displayed at the museum when it opens in 2006.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  Shortly after his election in 1995, Chirac asked his ministers for ideas for his legacy, and their brainstorming gave birth to the Quai Branly project, said Stephane Martin, the museum's president.

  Chirac said in June, when he welcomed a delegation of American Indians to his Elysee Palace, that ``in these times of violence, arrogance, intolerance and fanaticism,'' the museum will show ``France's faith in the virtues of cultural diversity and dialogue.''

  Much of the French state's collection of nearly 300,000 pieces of indigenous non-Western art was brought back from Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas by colonizers and scientific research missions. It ranges from Indonesian jewelry and bows and arrows to African figurines and household items such as Mayan pottery.

  ``It is the traces of France's political, colonial and scientific adventures,'' Martin said in an interview.

  The Quai Branly will combine collections currently housed at the museums of Mankind and of African and Oceanic Arts and at the Louvre, which lacks space to exhibit all its pieces.

  ``The public -- French and international, and particularly the representatives of the countries of origin -- wants to have access to these collections,'' Martin said. ``So we had to imagine a museum in which the collection would be much more accessible.''

  Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the long fluid building is being raised on piles, with a partially wood-covered exterior that seems more in keeping with California than Paris. Nouvel designed the building to look like the elongated shadow of the Eiffel Tower, which is just a few minutes walk away.

  Thickets of trees -- Martin called it a ``forest'' -- will shield the museum from the noise of traffic on the adjacent Quai Branly that runs beside the Seine. The 10,000m2 of exhibition space will include four separate rooms for temporary exhibitions and a main gallery for the permanent collection.

  Nouvel also designed Paris' Institut du Monde Arabe, with its remarkable shuttered windows that open and close like the iris of an eye depending on the amount of light outside. The building on the Left Bank, completed in 1987, was overseen by another president who left a powerful mark on Paris, socialist Francois Mitterrand.

  Other ``grands travaux'' -- great projects -- that form Mitterrand's legacy include the Grand Louvre, the Grande Arche at La Defense, the Bastille Opera House and the National Library. President Georges Pompidou, meanwhile, dreamed up the Centre Pompidou, and Valery Giscard d'Estaing left Paris the Musee d'Orsay.

  Naming the new museum proved problematic. The term primary or primitive arts was rejected as too limiting and because it neglects the functional aspect of the objects in their original contexts. In the end, the more neutral Quai Branly was favored.

  ``We chose this name a bit arbitrarily but also partly out of humility because it seemed arrogant to us to claim to exhaustively and positively define within a title what would be the ambition of an institution like the Quai Branly,'' said Martin.

  Although the museum is still under construction, curators already are preserving and archiving the nearly 300,000 pieces to make the collection more user-friendly. They are treating organic objects -- feathers or animal hides, for instance -- against insects and larvae and photographing the pieces and marking them with bar codes. Eventually the entire collection, including details such as the weight, size and history of each piece, will also be displayed on the Internet.

  Museum's site: www.quaibranly.fr
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