On French Museums

Part of our course on globalization focuses on museums and tourist sites because it shows how countries choose to present themselves not only to outsiders, but to their own people. Accordingly, I've been to several museums: The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to see the Race exhibit, the Musée de l'histoire de l'immigration (the Immigration Museum) here in Paris, and the Musée du Quai Branly. I also went to the Louvre, Dali Museum and Musée d'Orsay, which are more explicitely art museums than French history (some will tell you Quai Branly is also an art museum, I will tell you why I disagree). I went to Versailles this past weekend with friends, and though it had beautiful gardens, I am fairly fed-up with with a trend I've noticed regarding historical museums here. 

But before I get to that, let me at least describe the experiences I had at the Immigration Museum, Quai Branly and Versailles so you can see where I'm coming from.

Musée de l'histoire de l'immigration

Some background on this building: This building was originally built to celebrate French colonial history, not to celebrate its history of immigration. As such, the outside is covered in reliefs that glorify colonization and portray the French as this enlightening entity that is bringing these lesser people in the colonies out of the dark and into modernity. The inside used to house artifacts from Africa and Oceania, and once these artifacts were all moved to Quai Branly, the building was converted to a highly contested immigration museum in 2007.

Here''s the outside of the building

The opening hall was covered in frescos similar in nature to the outside reliefs

Okay, so at this point you're probably thinking something like, "Wow, these murals are pretty terrible. I bet they address that in the museum portion, and discuss reforms and changes in France's perception of other cultures. This could be a really eye-opening juxtaposition." 

 

Unfortunately, that did not seem to be the case. Rather than address the (negative) history of the building and (rather negative) history of immigration, most of the exhibit seemed to simply gloss over those aspects and pretend that immigrants were relatively accepted into and willing to adopt French culture. I've included some excepts from exhibit descriptions from the top floor (which dealt with how immigrants "currently" experience French culture).

These are "representative" of Chinese immigrants in France. Note the opium pipe/hooka 

There were some interesting pieces, like a second generation immigrant and the story of his return to his home-country. But overall I really started to feel that this museum was very propagandistic, and was not true to the immigrant history or experience. I think my classmate said it best: "The building itself is inherently racist, you need to address that head on."

Musée du Quai Branly

So Quai Branly theoretically aims to display cultural artifacts from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas as art pieces. Like I mentioned earlier, many of the pieces were moved there from the Immigration museum. This museum has faced a lot of criticism for the way it presents these cultural objects.

To enter the exhibit, you climb up a light, white spiral and find yourself in a dark hall, with red floors and prints of jungle trees covering the windows to prevent any light from coming in. It was set up to resemble "an exploration", and winding your way around and between pieces, you did feel like an explorer. 

The pieces are not displayed in any particular order (grouped by continent), so many pieces from different cultures would be set on pedestals together, and often were described in the present tense, as if these cultures were stagnant or primitive and did not develop over time.

So the things that bothered me about this museum was that it began to feel like a huge collection of colonial spoils. I say that for two reasons: 1) There was just SO MUCH. And 2) many of the pieces were described as "sacred" and belonging to the homes of the family it was taken from. It's definitely disrespectful to still have that on display when it clearly wasn't meant to be. I didn't feel that these objects were displayed with respects to the cultures they represented, they were just thrown there for the spectacle.

Oh! And this part was actually really amusing: There was a temporary exhibit called "Tiki Pop" which is about American's in the 50's obsessing over and fetishizing Polynesian cultures. Something about glass houses and throwing stones. I actually liked this exhibit, though, I felt it was pretty balanced in its criticism on cultural appropriation. I just wish the rest of the museum was like that.

A lounge inspired by "Tiki"

And shoot, I don't want to just hate on all these museums, I really enjoyed looking at all the different artifacts, they were beautiful but for Chist's sake there's a better and more respectful way to present it.

And finally,

Versailles

I'm just going to go straight to the point here: I walked through the palace (not impressed, it's really tacky), and not once was the French Revolution discussed. Except cryptically, like when the audio guide would mention that a certain room belonged to so and so until they had to escape in 1789.  Or when it was referred to as "a blight that allowed France's enemies to gain power over it". I mean, the building was RANSACKED. Most of it now is a replica. And multiple times it was mentioned how Versailles is still considered a symbol of glory for France. Really, to me, it seems like a symbol of gratuitous wealth, unnecessary spending, and little concern over people who literally could not feed themselves.

But also is it not important to discuss how this display of wealth was received? Not just with the wealthy but with peasants as well? Just in a historical sense? Apparently it's not that important.

Here's some pictures:

Off to a pretty solid start

Like really do you need 5 different kinds of marble to make up with room with gold trim and fake marble painted on the ceiling the answer is no 

There were also just soooooo many other tourists 

This is actually in Marie Antoinette's personal garden. SO BEAUTIFUL and you can sit on the grass!

I know I must sound like such a sour puss.  I really did end up enjoying the rest of the day out in the gardens (a portion of which was free to the public).

Maybe it's because this is the first time I've looked at museums this critically. And I don't mean to hate on Paris. I know there are probably a ton of museums in the states that must have the same issues with acknowledging negative historical aspects of the US. I just haven't been asked to notice them before.

I just think that when you go to a foreign country, it seems reasonable to expect some kind of objectivity when you go to museums to learn. I was unpleasantly surprised in that respect. It's a little frustrating because what's intended to be glorifying to France mostly comes across as and attempt to sweep the terrible things under the rug and pretend they never happened.

But also go to all the art museums because they are beautiful and really just talk about the art.

ttyl

Rachel