Interview Transcript

1 Interviews with museum personnel

 Mister Chih-Cha, Chung, touring exhibition coordinator (on the phone)

Q: Does the location of the museum bring benefit or meaning to the museum? Or how do you see that the shift of this location from core heart of the city to right next to the Tour Eiffel?

A: Yes, of course, the location is very benefit for us because we are close to the Eiffel Tower.

We are on the Seine River Bank. That we don't actually benefit form...we have a study and the tour will go to the Tour Eiffel. They don't come to the museum actually. You need to know, our museum is almost 85% French visitors. So you know the one who go to the Eiffel Tower is the tourist come from Europe, America, or Asia, or America Latin.

Q: Before the museum decided to build, was there any other place that possible to locate the museum?

A: No, it's a story of the museum. You know the project of Jacques Chirac? He was the President of the Republic France. When he say ok I want build a project about non-European culture, he just found left location available in Paris is now where situating the Quai Branly. So actually we don't have two choices, no, it's the only choice.

Q: What makes the museum so typical from other ethnology museums?

A: Actually, we don't consider ourselves as ethnographic museum. We have many collections from the Musée de l'Homme and Musée des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceanie but we consider ourselves as contemporary cultural museum.

Q: How about the comparison with the Guimet et MUCEM in Marseille?

A: Because the collection is different so make the museum different. Guimet is totally Asian collection. MUCEM is totally the collection of popular art from the Méditerranée. And our collection is Africa, Oceania, America and Asia. It no European collection. So it makes different actually.

Q: Does the museum help to coherent the surroundings or environment with ethnic groups together? Or does it help to break down the stereotype of the other or minority? How about the social and political atmosphere in Paris?

A: The collection, permanent collection, our exhibition help the French the visitor to understand another culture from Africa, Asia. Of course…We emphasize the beauty of the object, aesthetic of the object, but less contextual, the history, the ritual. It's less important. It succeeds the beauty of the object itself is very important. One point we make the different is we consider the object we have the collection is art work. Ethnographic museum they don't

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consider these object as is art works. The way we present the work, the way we do our programming the condition is quite different.

Q: I have see some papers about this, most of them are trying to give a debate between ethnic and aesthetic between these art works. So how do you face such debate?

A: I tell you this is what we can't. This is our belief so we consider these objects art works. So we present these as art works. Of course, some critique we say ok their explanation we don't understand what its usage, everything like that, but at least we have found video we always have the notice to explain what is served the object. But before this, the object is very beautiful presented.

Q: Before the research, I have seen the video. In the video, an African anthropologist, he said in Africa, they don't have a word for art. Actually these stuffs are very ritual. So how does the idea to link ritual, ethnic, and art altogether?

A: You know the Chinese…we consider it as artwork. At that time, it is used for daily usage or ritual. The…was from China. The same thing, they were not considered as artwork at that time.

But today everyone consider it as artwork. This is artwork. It is very high value object, you know. So why not African art and Oceania art?

Q: Do you have modern or recent works from these nations included in the exhibition?

A: We do. In some exhibitions, we do include contemporary art works from contemporary artists. You know we have the biennial Photoquai. We present contemporary photographic artist every two years from around the world actually.

Q: How does the community living around the museum inspired by artists? Does the museum inspire the creativity of artists and residents through cultural diversity?

A: I don't know. Maybe you ask some artists. We do our programming, we present the very high quality art works but I know this should have some impacts for the artist's creation. But I don't think we evaluate from the part of the museum to say that ok which art work inspire which artist. Today, we cannot say that museum consider the same thing.

Q: How do artists see their works in the museum presented?

A: Actually we have residents for the photographic artist but until today we don't have African artists coming from Africa, no. It's our volonté. It's our purpose. Every year we have selection and so one or two artist come to create some photographic art works.

Q: After nine years of opening, do you think that the principle of the museum to share the equal value of different group and different culture. Do you think that the idea has been realized?

A: I think. I do believe. I think the visitors who visit our museum, especially French visitors, their origin from Africa or from America or another country; they live here and become French.

They appreciate our approach. The cool is that we are the forth museum. Number of visitors per year is the forth. Musée du Louvre is the first one, Musée d'Orsay, and Centre Pompidou is the third one. We are the forth one. We are successful, and I think the reason is the people come

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and come, and they appreciate the way we present the art work, the way we do the exhibition, the subject of the exhibition, something like that.

Q: This is almost the end. Thank you.

A: Just a point about the minority. Actually two years before, we organized exhibition as title is Dogon. It's a very special, high value of African art from Mali, in the West Africa. So during the exhibition, we tried to get the Mali, French Mali people come to visit the museum. We know the time Mali people move to France they live mostly in the Montreuil, in the east of Paris. So what we association in the Montreuil for Mali, the Dogon community and they come to visit the exhibition. So we do something like that. But not every show. This exhibition we have tried action like this. So this is one of our mission, of course, to get involve the diaspora with their collections.

 Mister Frédéric Keck, Director of the Department of Research and Education (in his office) Q: Before the interview with you, I had an interview with another person who also works in this museum. He is in charge of itinerary exhibition, international part. He said that the museum’s location does not really benefit from situating right next to the Eiffel Tower.

A: That it does not benefit?

Q: Because he said that visitors, most of them visit the Eiffel Tower. They wouldn’t come to visit the Quai Branly.

A: Well, they have quite a bit number of visitors, like one million a year…But you know the history of this museum? It was the museum of anthropology or Museum de l’Homme, that was on the hill, Chaillot.

Q: Chaillot? I just know Trocadéro.

A: Trocadéro is the name of the square and Chaillot is the whole hill where there are couples of museums.

Q: Do you think that the new site right here, right next to the Eiffel Tower, build up a new community or neighborhood, different from where the Louvre is situated?

A: In terms of neighborhood, this area is very quiet. So the people live here, I think they would…we have them for organized conferences and presentations of books. Sometimes, this kind of public comes to our events. But… so the situation we have is quite specific because we are the department of research but this is not the university…was the most university, history clearly oriented in the Latin quarter. You know the Latin quarter? So that it’s the Institut de France, Sorbonne. When there are events for intellectual debate is in this area of the city, in Latin quarter. So the difficulty we have is to attract academics and students to come here because we are organizing these conferences and presentations about anthropology, history of art, all the questions of non-Western art. So that’s our job, the department of research. Now in terms of public, I don’t know because I think…Paris has two axes, you know, one is the axis

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between L’Arc de Triomphe, Place de la Concorde, Louvre and then it goes to the Notre Dame.

It’s like west-east and then you have l’Arc de Defence. So this is Napoléon who actually chose to have this kind of axis. And then there is another axis which is the River Seine where you have the Eiffel Tower, Musée du Quai Branly, Musée d’Orsay and then you also have Notre Dame, And if you go along, Institute du Monde Arabe, you have the Museum of Natural History. So we are on the second line. So in terms of public, I don’t know exactly how people share their with Eiffel Tower and this but in terms of posing the axes of museum square was situated, especially, have you seen this new river bank? So if you go outside on the quai and you go down on the river, there is a new called Promanade de Berge and bear the famous name of philosopher and a lot people go there for walking, exercising. So this is in terms of environment.

Q: So how exactly atmosphere around in the social part that help to break up the stereotype of the people in the community?

A: So here is a department of publics that run the public and they have the statistics on the people, you cannot have the statistics about ethnic people of original in fact, do you know that, you cannot ask someone are you Christian, or Nigerian. You cannot ask any question about ethnic or religious belonging. This is just none natural publican, not allowed. It’s very specific.

So they find ways to ask people about if they feel that they have common history with these objects find in the museum, and actually from the…from the immigrant background come to the museum more than Louvre or d’Orsay.

Q: How about the coherence in the museum?

A: You mean the coherence perceived by the public? So what we have here in comparison with the Louvre is that we have much more exhibitions, think that half the space, oh, more than half space, no is actually twice. You have one floor is the artifacts from Africa, Asia, America and Oceania, and top level, you have three galleries exhibitions, and you also have a gallery downstairs, the white gallery. So you have two floors of temporary exhibition and one floor for permanent. And this is quite unique in this sense. Like the Louvre has very small space for the temporary exhibition. So it’s a museum in sense of represent the collection but it’s also a forum that we present all kinds of exhibitions on cultures of the world. So now you have the exhibition on Tiki Pop, it’s about America and Polynesia, and you have about tattoo, about Vietnam. There is plantation that is going to be Maya. So the problem is the coherence of all the exhibition. So the reason why there are so many exhibitions is that there are many criticisms at the start when the museum was open because I think fairly the approach of the museum to have primitivism, aesthetics, which mean that objects are plunged in an atmosphere of like deep forest, like very somber. It’s not the question of conservation. Its city’s choice. So to answer these critiques, they left the collections, the permanent exhibition conceived by the architect Jean Nouvel and then created all these spaces where they give other images of the

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museum provides. So that’s very different from the Louvre because the Louvre sometimes change a few rooms or add new things like Mezim Art or ornament of cabinets of 18^th century but basically the architecture is the same since the 19^th century.

Q: So how do you think about the museum interacts with the community? The architecture and exhibition around this area. I find that the near community, their building is quite expensive, this area is a kind of luxurious. So how do you think about the interaction between the museum and the community?

A: So the garden play a very important role because it’s a garden people like to enter and walk.

It’s also attractive for people who don’t live here but come here. People can also work in the library upstairs. And sometimes there is another library downstairs, Kerchache, like students or school can come to work in the library so this is a kind of interaction. And problem is of course that the neighbors are as same as the visitors so there are exits for free exits, I don’t know whether they visit all the temporary exhibition.

Q: So do you have a program or how to estimate the achievement of the museum after 9 years of opening?

A: Yes, there are all kinds of system, tell a lot of indicators…can be the number people of the visit, can be like…I don’t know. And this museum has a very good image. All these exhibitions have regular articles in the press…what do you mean?

Q: What I want to ask is that the principle of the museum is that each culture has its equality and dignity…

A: But there is also an idea of dialogue.

Q: Yeah, dialogue, some papers claim that it’s not a dialogue, it’s a monologue. So there is this kinds of debate around between the...

A: Well, it’s a polyphony. I think the idea of dialogue is not so good. Because there is no encounter between Asian objects and African objects. People can walk around and have their own associations. But it’s more like polyphony because it presents a series of different ways to exhibit these objects. So if people are not happy with one way of presenting them, they can come back and see if the other way of presenting is better.

Q: So do you think that the museum will provide artists or residents the chance to enrich their creative life or cultural diversity?

A: For the moment, it’s not the case. I know some museums of ethnology have that. Like I just came back from Frankfurt where Duzart artist in residence. So it’s not possible because the space is very limited here and also…so what we have here is we hire students to do the research on the collections of the museum. So now we are thinking of a building a partnership with La Cité de l’Architecture, precisely dedicates to artist in residence. So that we can have interaction between research and artists who are interest in the collection of the museum.

Q: So right now you have the internship for students?

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A: It’s a grant. It’s like for PhD grant. And they have office there and they have access to all the services like restaurant.

Q: How do these students help to give more ideas to the museum?

A: Yes, yes, because they do their own research and they send us their reports or articles. So we have to constantly reach to the collections with the research.

Q: So you will see this museum as a center of research of art, right?

A: Yes, it’s a center of research because that’s what’s before it was a museum of anthropology, doing research about the objects. And it’s also a center for conservation because these objects have important value on the art market so they have to be preserved. And also the knowledge that it contains must be preserved. And now or the contemporary art, it’s a tricky question because there is some contemporary art in the temporary exhibitions like Tiki Pop in some way can be considered temporary art or they were contemporary artists for the plantation conference or Polynesian exhibition. But the artist don’t actually come on site because I’ve told you there is no…I mean they can come for a visit but there is no space for that.

Q: I have seen in the video, an African anthropologist, he said that in Africa they don’t have a word for art. So do you face this kind of debate between anthropology and art?

A: So there were debates of what is the value of the objects, scientific value or artistic value, I think the debate is not very good. Actually, what we can see is that these objects have different meanings and different uses. And one of their uses is to be exposed in the museum or sold in the gallery of art. And so anthropology has to investigate on the…what we called the life of objects, the biography of the objects, where they passed from one usage to another. So tracing back the history of collection is the way we do research here.

Q: So how do you view such a paradox when the idea rose in the 1996?

A: So the debate was very violent, very hard at the beginning of the museum between ethnologists and collectors. But…actually this position between ethnology and art is a new and is not so important in the 1930s when the Musée de l’Homme was created. There was ethnologist and collector Paul Rivet and Georges-Henri Rivière. Rivière was the collector who worked with the surrealist. So non-western arts are always being used because they asked questions about what art is in the West so there is kind of provocative encounter with these objects that help artists create more, while still be noticed. And so ethnologists don’t have to say which is good use, or which is bad use of the objects. Things just happen. Ethnologists have to provide more information about the objects. And if these objects have become more of art is part of the information but not the only information.

Q: Do you think that the museum sees the different angles of viewing aesthetics between Europeans, Asia and Africa?

A: There is no view of aesthetic in Asia and view in Africa. I mean there is view in Taiwan and

A: There is no view of aesthetic in Asia and view in Africa. I mean there is view in Taiwan and