Quai Branly Research Articles

Влияние Жака Ширака на культурную политику Франции

The article treats the influence of Jacques Chirac, President of the Fifth Republic, on the French cultural policy during his first and second presidencies. It also analyses the president’s cultural preferences and their reflec-tion in the country’s cultural policy. The main attention is paid to the largest projects for the creation of new cul-tural institutions (The Musée du Quai Branly, Louvre-Lens, Louvre Abu Dhabi), and Chirac’s contribution to the conception of these projects as well as their implementation. The issues of the development of Chirac’s ideas about cultural equality and the so-called “primitive” art and their formation from the time of his leadership as the mayor of Paris to his second presidential term are touched upon. The article analyzes the testimonies of the president’s associates that speak about Chirac’s role in shaping the cultural and political course of his era.

Splot kultur, splot obrazów. Fotograficzna „tkanina” pamięci Dinh Q. Lê

The paper aims to present the issues of post-memory arising from the photographic and video art works of Dinh Q Lę. The specific technique used by the American-Vietnamese artist can be described as “fabric” due to the post-media processing in the form of interwoven photographic strips connected to create an innovative combination dedicated to the connections between East and West, the sacred and the profane, and colour contrasts. Deconstruction of the initial material creates unconventional iconographic combinations that blur the clear meanings recorded in the image, with the aim of their secondary reconfiguration, often marked by traumatic war events. The peculiar form of expression seems to reflect the dynamics of a complex form, ambiguity, and allusion, which is no longer just an automatic reproduction of reality, but a creative field of transformations, weaving, entanglement of threads overlapping various spheres of reference, animation of the meanings of words transformed into moving images that reflect them. The subject of the considerations outlined in this article is an exhibition entitled Dinh Q.Lę. Le fil de la mémoire et autres photographs organised between February 8 and November 20, 2022 at the Musée de Quai Branly.

Icono-diagnosis of therapeutic scarification in Sub-Saharan Africa

BackgroundBeyond the expression of thought and aesthetic considerations, works of art are proving to be real sources of information. Studied in several human sciences, they are also of interest in the medical field. Indeed, with human graphic representations, it is possible to establish a medical diagnosis thanks to an icono-diagnosis. This theme was discussed during a symposium at the quai Branly – Jacques Chirac museum and inspired this article. MethodologyBased on work dealing with different skin lesions and their circumstances of occurrence, this conceptual article deals with therapeutic scarification in sub-Saharan African cultures. DiscussionHaving existed in several cultures of the world, scarification has several meanings. Although they are tending to disappear, they are still present in many sub-Saharan African cultures. As a sociocultural marker, scarification also bears witness to a therapeutic tradition. Spiritual considerations as well as symbolic and graphic diversities within the different cultural groups lead to possible confusion. This raises the question of an effective icono-diagnosis and the keys necessary for a reliable diagnosis. PerspectivesIt is possible to establish an icono-diagnosis based on scarification in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the reliability of the diagnosis depends on a perfect knowledge of the cultures of origin studied. It is necessary to carry out a study of the cultural codes of the population studied prior to the diagnosis. Given the cultural and spiritual specificities of Sub-Saharan African societies, it seems interesting to us to open the fields of this research to human sciences whose implications seem obvious.

The techno-politics of programming vision

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size DISCLOSURE STATEMENTNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsHeba Y. AminHeba Y. Amin is a Professor of Digital and Time-Based art at ABK-Stuttgart, the co-founder of the Black Athena Collective, curator of visual art for the MIZNA journal, and currently sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Digital War. She was awarded the 2020 Sussmann Artist Award for artists committed to the ideals of democracy and antifascism, and was selected as a Field of Vision Fellow, NYC (2019). Amin’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including The Mosaic Rooms, London (2021), the Böttcherstrasse Prize Exhibition, Bremen (2018), Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam (2020), Quai Branly Museum, Paris (2020), MAXXI Museum, Rome (2018), Liverpool Biennial (2021), 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), 15th Istanbul Biennale (2017), and 12th Dak’Art Biennale (2016), to name a few. Her latest publication, Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork (ed. Anthony Downey) was recently published by Sternberg Press (2020) and her works and interventions have been covered by The New York Times, The Guardian, the Intercept, and BBC among others. Furthermore, Amin is also one of the artists behind the subversive graffiti action on the set of the television series Homeland which received worldwide media attention.Anthony DowneyAnthony Downey is a Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University). He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text, Digital War and Memory, Mind & Media, respectively, and is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press, 2020 – ongoing). Recent and upcoming publications include Post-Digital Futures and Algorithmic Anxieties (MIT Press, 2024); Nida Sinnokrot: Palestine Is Not a Garden (Sternberg Press & MIT Press, 2023); Khalil Rabah: Falling Forward – Works, 1995–2025 (Sharjah Art Foundation and Hatje Cantz, 2022); Topologies of Air: Shona Illingworth (Sternberg Press & The Power Plant, 2022), and Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork (Sternberg Press/MIT, 2020). He is the Cultural and Commissioning Lead on a four-year multi-disciplinary AHRC Network Plus award, where his research focuses on supporting cultural practices, digital methodologies and educational provision for children with disabilities in Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Jordan (2020–2024).

Paris and its Revolutionary Ideas: A Guide to French Culture and the Capital by Suzanne Lalonde

Reviewed by: Paris and its Revolutionary Ideas: A Guide to French Culture and the Capital by Suzanne Lalonde Erika E. Hess LaLonde, Suzanne. Paris and its Revolutionary Ideas: A Guide to French Culture and the Capital. Cognella, 2021. ISBN 978-1-5165-3870-6. Pp. xxii + 213. "Can the past shed light on our future?" (xviii). That is the question that LaLonde asks as she searches for guidance––for herself and her students––in dealing with contemporary social, environmental, and medical crises. Turning to French revolutionary thinkers, she answers that through them "we may very well" find inspiration and guidance (xviii). LaLonde's original and ambitious work is designed as a textbook for students studying Parisian culture; it includes analyses of writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and others who "confronted troubling times" in their own eras and "responded with revolutionary ideas" (xviii). She divides her study into ten chapters based on forms of revolution: educational, moral, ethical, political, emotional, artistic, psychological, metaphysical, psycho-philosophical, and global. Each chapter is clearly organized, beginning with a timeline of the key events, and including "Tool Boxes" with study tips, such as "History to Focus on While Reading" (3) or "Concepts from Literature to Focus On" (9), as well as questions to assist students, "Connect the Past with the Present" (9), and "Thinking Allowed: Topics to Ponder and Debate in Class" (xxii). Each chapter also has a "we may very well guide" (or guides), a key figure or writer in the revolutionary idea of that chapter. Throughout her study, LaLonde draws particular attention to paradigm shifts that "promoted a greater sense of dignity for humanity and the natural environment" (xviii), and she focuses primarily on literature and art because, she says, "Literature and art not only make us hear the voice of the voiceless, but they also prime our minds to feel empathy for others" (xx). LaLonde periodically relates a chapter's topic of study to contemporary issues to aid students in drawing connections between the past and present. For example, in her discussion of André Breton, LaLonde contrasts the revolutionary expansiveness of surrealism with the lack of innovation of realism, saying: "Images from realist literature mirror viral clichés on Facebook, kitschy objects for sale at a museum, or stock images on the Internet" (133). She incorporates a vast range of material, first providing necessary historical background for each chapter and then undertaking an analysis of some key works. For example, in chapter IX, "A Psycho-Philosophical Revolution: A Decolonization of the Mind," LaLonde begins with a summary of "colonial history in general" and then moves on to the history of the French colonial empire––together these comprise six pages (168-174); she then turns to Albert Camus and Frantz Fanon, providing a brief biography of each, followed by a short study of their key works. Finally, LaLonde discusses the Quai Branly Museum and its "contradictory goals" (182). Given the broad range of topics, LaLonde's treatment of each is necessarily introductory, however her original perspective and stimulating choice of topics create an [End Page 298] exciting and timely study. The textbook could be used in its entirety for a lower-division course of French culture focusing on Paris, or it could be supplemented for more advanced courses. The book is written entirely in English (all French words and phrases are translated). [End Page 299] Erika E. Hess Northern Arizona University Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

A Museum of Black Civilizations in the Contemporary World: In conversation with Hamady Bocoum

A Museum of Black Civilizations in the Contemporary World: In conversation with Hamady Bocoum

Toward New Feminist Aesthetics

Toward New Feminist Aesthetics

Scholars and the Politics of International Art Restitution

Almost every week brings news of another major European museum agreeing to return looted art. Since the 2000s we have grown somewhat accustomed to the headlines describing a ceremonial return to its original owners of a painting looted in the Holocaust, a process that took decades to develop and was initially met with considerable resistance in the art world and in the countries where this art was displayed.1 In the past few years, however, building in part on the perceived success of Holocaust art restitution but also on the increased visibility and impact of national and global social movements demanding racial justice and institutional decolonisation, major international museums have come under ever stronger pressure to return art looted as part of colonial occupations. Perhaps the most organised of the current campaigns is the campaign to return the so-called ‘Benin Bronzes’ – a vast collection of various artifacts looted from the Kingdom of Benin (in today's Nigeria) and dispersed across major international museums, most prominently the British Museum in London, the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, among others. Since 2020, a number of museums have pledged to return their holdings of Benin Bronzes and restitute them to Nigeria, where a major new museum is being built to display them in Benin City. All of this activity has also reenergised perhaps the most famous case for restitution – the movement to return the Parthenon ‘Elgin’ marbles from the British Museum to the Acropolis in Athens.

Restitution vs. Retention: Reassessing Discourses on the African Cultural Heritage

AbstractIn order to reappraise discourses on the restitution vs. retention of Africa’s cultural heritage, Eyssette examines the Musée du Quai Branly (France), the AfricaMuseum (Belgium), the British Museum (UK), and the Humboldt Forum (Germany) as one representative spectrum for analysis showing the mutual imbrications of their changing strategies and practices. After detecting biases in retentionist arguments on security, accessibility, law, and ethics, Eyssette stresses symmetrical shortcomings in restitutionist discourses on provenance research and the instrumentalization of heritage for economic gains or post-colonial rebranding. The conclusion determines whether these four institutions are retentionists, rhetorical restitutionists, or truly reformed restitutionists.

JOHN MAWURNDJUL'S ART IN PARIS

abstract The Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac (MQBJC) in Paris includes a commissioned ceiling mural by Australian artist John Mawurndjul. Neither the identity of the artist nor the cultural meaning of the work features strongly as part of the visitor experience for this work. Such interpretation is, in general, pushed to the margins in the museum's permanent exhibits. Paradoxically, the temporary exhibits are treated differently. The paper details how the power of John Mawurndjul's art is developed in relation to social activities on his own country as well as his cross‐cultural engagements with the broader art world. Cultural meaning and strong principles of aesthetics are developed through this creativity. The paper presents these insights as interpretational possibilities for Mawurndjul's mural and questions whether an avowed museum of world arts can continue to ignore the development of a more cross‐cultural definition of aesthetics and a relational approach to develop and interpret its permanent exhibits.

The Era of Endless Repatriation: Respectful Relationality and the Reconfiguration of Colonial Authority

Originally given in the form of two lectures at the Musée du quai Branly, this essay explores the often fraught politica of repatriation in a Canadian context. It suggests that we have moved into an era in which repatriation, understood in this alternate sense as the decentring of settler museum authority and the recognition of Indigenous sovereign rights, is simply unavoidable. This is not just about a “reckoning” with prior histories of colonial appropriation. Rather, it is a recognition of the fact that the structures of settler colonialism themselves are shifting (cf: Kauanui 2016), and museums in such contexts will need to engage with the idea of repatriation as such, as a social phenomenon that entails transformation over the longue durée instead of a set of individual, case by case incidents. Drawing on the author’s experiences as an anthropologist and a curator working with Indigenous Nations on the Northwest Coast of what is now called Canada, the essay ultimately argues that museums will arrive at stronger, more productive relationships with First Peoples by accepting the ongoing reality of repatriations. Indeed, it suggests that it is only through collaboration that genuinely decentres museum authority and foregrounds Indigenous sovereignty that museums will be able to develop genuinely future-oriented and responsible practices.

The Evolution of Chinese View of Death: Focusing on the Zhizha Art Exhibition at Musée Du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

The Evolution of Chinese View of Death: Focusing on the Zhizha Art Exhibition at Musée Du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

Yonder on the Other Side

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article On Mental Health, People, and PlacesFull AccessYonder on the Other SideEzra E. H. Griffith, M.D.Ezra E. H. GriffithSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:29 Dec 2021https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2022.1.26AbstractParis is a beautiful and beguiling city. Visitors must be careful about reacting too quickly to the city’s obvious charm and seduction. I recently attended a Paris performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers (“Vêpres de la Vierge”) at the modern auditorium of the stunning Radio France building. A few days later, I was listening to lectures at the Quai Branly Jacques Chirac Museum on the artistic culture of Bénin, formerly the French colony of Dahomey. Such experiences in quick succession induce relaxation, intellectual stimulation, and enjoyment of the surrounding aesthetics. However, sustaining that state of mind is hard.I am sitting one evening in a small theater watching a play, “Là-Bas de L’Autre Côté de L’Eau” (“Yonder on the Other Side of the Water”), written by Pierre Olivier Scotto and directed by Xavier Lemaire. The scene is French Algeria in the 1950s. Enter France, an attractive and lively young woman who is enamored of things French. She is in love with Moktar, a vibrant Algerian militant—that is, until a young French soldier shows up on the scene and gets France’s head and heart spinning. France’s mother, Marthe, whose husband died at the hands of French soldiers, is not pleased about her daughter’s new love interest. I knew immediately that we were on sensitive ground. Algeria is always a dangerous subject when one is in Paris.William Gardner Smith’s newly republished book, The Stone Face, comes to mind. Smith first published the book in 1963 and focused on the experience of Black Americans exiling themselves to Paris around that time to flee the racism in the United States. An important theme in the book is the discovery by the main protagonist of a puzzling contradiction. The French welcomed the Black American exiles while venting wrath on the Algerians, who were at the bottom of the country’s caste system.A monument on the Seine River memorializes the Algerian National Liberation Front fighters who died in the Paris Massacre in 1961.Brigitte GriffithThe Algerian War (1954-1962) is the setting for the play. The Algerian National Liberation Front (NLF) wants independence from France. However, there is a constituency of French Algerians, including Marthe, demanding the mother country stay the course, keep the colony, and maintain French identity. In the mid-1950s, the independence movement heated up with significant violence. The NLF placed its bombs in Paris and at home with terrifying effect. The French authorities responded firmly and matched terror with their own brand. The Paris Massacre, of October 17, 1961 (referenced in Smith’s book), saw policemen throwing NLF demonstrators into the Seine River, causing the death of hundreds. On October 17, 2019, this event was memorialized by construction of a stele, a monument with an inscription, placed at the Saint-Michel Bridge that crosses the Seine (see photo).French and Algerians had been living side by side for years. Algerians served in the French Army and fought in World War II. However, the French government would not pay pensions to Algerian veterans, although French veterans were compensated. Each side had its grievances. Moktar, too, is caught in the violence. He wants the French out of Algeria. The trouble with that simple demand is that many French Algerians have never set foot in France; France is not their home. The audience understands that finding a solution to the conflict is not easy.By the end of the play, we know that there can be no obvious triumph for anybody. There is a claim that personal identity has been clarified and solidified for some. Young France must put limits on her imagination. The French Republic recognizes long after the war that promises were broken to both sides. Many people died in the Algerian conflict.There are always observers who insist that violence is the only way to overturn the caste ladder. The water between Algeria and France does not magically wash away memories and judgments of the other. If we are not careful, those recollections stoke the fire of vengeance. The path to reconciliation is uncomfortable, not pleasurable like listening to Monteverdi. Nevertheless, the play is a beautiful experience, even if heart rending, to witness dramatic art confronting struggles related to colonization, caste, and indignity. ■Ezra E. H. Griffith, M.D., is professor emeritus of psychiatry and African American Studies at Yale University. ISSUES NewArchived

Afropolitanist Return and Circulation

In June 2020, Congolese-born activist Mwazulu Diyabanza and five others attempted to remove a nineteenth-century Chadian funeral post from the Musée du Quai Branly—Jacques Chirac. Diyabanza would go on to enact this type of protest in two more European museums before the end of the year. He and his fellow protestors proclaimed a collective European and North American complicity and were tried by French courts for group theft of an object of cultural heritage. As the reader likely knows, the cultural heritage here in question was France's, whose appeal for the items in part mirrors Amanda M. Maples's Afropolitanist considerations in her First Word. These items have indeed been resocialized, but should at the very least be accessible to their communities of origin as they speak to different geographies in multiple languages (Maples 2020).The year 2020 and its deluge of surprises left us with small consolations: much of the African continent emerged from the COVID epidemic relatively unscathed. However, the virus' ramifications have already begun affecting sub-Saharan African countries, spurring legitimate concerns about vaccine equity. These dynamics undoubtedly mirror the stakes and discourse that affect sub-Saharan African countries and cultural institutions and only strengthen the case for financial support. Dr. Memel Kassi notes the disparity in the circulation of artwork among the United States, Europe, and the African continent in her contribution to this discussion, and I join her in a call for financial commitments from North American institutions. A model for comanagement, in the form of a fixed-term rental deposit, complements Maples's call for North American museums to properly investigate provenance and inform the placement of these works of art.However, this task cannot be completed unilaterally. Much of the cataloguing and provenance research, the investigations into cultural heritage and exercises that advance institutional capabilities in North American and European institutions, remains inaccessible to the majority of museum professionals on the African continent. Adopting a significant “role in a politics of cultural action” is an exercise that in and of itself demands boundless adaptability. Efforts such as the controversial Humboldt Museum's “Humboldt Lab Tanzania,” with support from TURN (The Fund for Artistic Cooperation between Germany and African Countries), engaged scholars in the sites of origin of selected pieces and the store rooms for the very sites where the artifacts are held. Such initiatives, though still insufficient, are essential to active cultural reengagement around these very artifacts.I also echo Christine Mullen Kreamer's reflection on the distinctions between process and outcome, and the manners in which both can be useful material exercises for developing new dynamics of equity between North American and African institutions. Given these histories of exclusion and the concerns around ensuring that artifact return follows and instills “sustainable development,” the hazards—legal, geopolitical, financial, emotional—demand novel modes of reasoning across institutions and geographies. Following Kreamer's question and reiterating Strother's own, we must ask how North American institutions can work toward outcomes that won't replicate the very imbalanced hierarchies of power that have produced the current complications around assessing the merits of return.North American institutional partnerships cannot be limited to North American peers. As Maples measuredly points out, the burden of devising best practice guidelines cannot be shouldered by one institution alone. The same logic extends continentally. Travel and knowledge-sharing must be made active and transparent and cannot exclude the very professionals who will themselves ensure conservation and curation for the objects that will be repatriated or circulated.We must not forget, ultimately, that properly accounting for the placement of African artwork is a mutually beneficial gesture in addition to an ethical obligation, one that will result in stronger relationships between African and North American museums. African institutions will hopefully only gain in prominence, agency, and influence in the future, bringing Amadou Mahtar M'Bow's 2000 appeal to fruition. Construction will soon begin for the Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) on the very site of the former Benin Palace. It is set to house the Benin Bronzes (on loan) after a fifty-year dream of restitution, embodying an Afropolitan repatriation of agency (Maples 2020). We are best served by cultivating a future where the most prominent bastions of African cultural heritage can be safely and conscientiously cherished from both sides of the Atlantic.

"Blindness Gain" as Worldmaking: Audio Description as a New "partage du sensible"

"Blindness Gain" as Worldmaking:Audio Description as a New "partage du sensible" Marion Chottin and Hannah Thompson IN THIS ARTICLE we use our experiences of co-creating creative audio descriptions at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris to suggest that the worldmaking practices of challenge, collaboration, action, and dialogue offer a means to call into question the traditional ways of accessing museum and gallery content that still prevail in (French) society.1 We define "disability's worldmaking" in the museum or art gallery as a two-part process. First, we challenge the 'givenness' of the hierarchies, relationships, and assumptions that govern visitor experience in the museum. Second, we offer an alternative model of visitor engagement where active and dialogic co-creation provides an inclusive alternative to ocularcentric museum experiences. Together, these acts of worldmaking promise an alternative mode of being in the museum that suggests a new politics of access. By going beyond current understandings of 'inclusion,' our project does not limit itself to giving disabled people a museum experience analogous to that of non-disabled people. Instead, it explores and celebrates alternative modes of engaging with art that do more than merely echo normative museum experiences and which, more broadly, open up a new way of making society. Our definition of worldmaking is a counterpoint to Jacques Rancière's concept of "le partage du sensible" and is informed by the concept of "blindness gain." In Rancière's words, le partage du sensible as a political concept is "ce système d'évidences sensibles qui donne à voir en même temps l'existence d'un commun et les découpages qui y définissent les places et les parts respectives."2 Elsewhere, he elaborates on this definition, describing it as "la façon dont les formes d'inclusion et d'exclusion qui définissent la participation à une vie commune sont d'abord configurées au sein même de l'expérience sensible de la vie."3 In other words, according to Rancière, there is "une esthétique de la politique": the assignment of a place to each person in society is manifested through the sensory experience itself, and, for him, particularly in a division between visibility and invisibility; audibility and inaudibility: those who participate in public life are visible and audible, while those who do not are invisible and inaudible (kept hidden and silent within the private sphere). Given that, for Rancière, the realm of art is a privileged place of sensory experience, it is therefore also a privileged place for le partage du sensible, which expresses who has a place in society and who does not. We argue that, nowadays, it is in the museum [End Page 32] or art gallery that the dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion are most starkly played out. But Rancière does not include disabled people among the categories of people—like workers—who, according to him, are excluded from society by the very fact of their invisibility and inaudibility. Neither does he discuss how painting, an art considered supremely visual, produces invisibility, that is, the absence of blind or partially blind people from museums, nor does he consider how the other senses might play a role in reducing blind people's exclusion from art and society. The reasons for these various silences are obvious: by ignoring the domain of disability, Rancière does not perceive its invisibility, and hence the exclusion of disabled people; he thinks of le partage du sensible mainly in terms of visibility and invisibility, without thinking of moving beyond the presumed primacy of sight.4 In our work, we ask how people who are blind or partially blind gain access to the politically and culturally charged space of the museum or art gallery, so that they too can participate in acts of multi-sensory worldmaking and thus undermine le partage du sensible between those who are invisible and inaudible because they are blind, and those who are visible and audible because they are sighted. The theory of "blindness gain" is a reimagining of the notion of "deaf gain" theorized by Bauman and Murray.5 "Deaf gain" is a critical position and...

The Amazonian statue. A biography of a famous and polemic artifact from Brazil

Abstract A large stone statue was brought from the Amazon to France in 1848 by the explorer Francis de Castelnau. It depicts a being, apparently human, squatting, with his hands on his chest. Now exhibited at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, this piece created a strong controversy since it was made public. In the mid-19th century, several Brazilian intellectuals strongly criticized the arrogant attitude of the Frenchman who had ‘looted’ their heritage. In reality, the reasons for this conflict are much deeper since they affect the very identity of the nation, then in formation. In any case, even a play was written to mock the explorer. This gave rise to doubts about the authenticity of the object, which has persisted to this day. The authors therefore studied the artifact to determine its cultural origin, while analyzing existing references to compare it with other pieces from the Amazon. They were thus able to validate the statue’s Amerindian identity, nearly 170 years after its discovery.

First in-situ use of a mobile CT-scan for museum artefacts: The quai Branly – Jacques Chirac museum experience

Abstract Background Radiology has many uses other than clinical diagnosis or surgical planning. In museum settings, the use of X-rays is frequent for objects submitted to structural analysis (in that case, they are temporarily moved to hospitals or research centers for this special exam). Purpose For the first time, we wanted to test the feasibility of a CT-scan (computed tomography) in-situ, i.e. in an international museum setting, with the help of a mobile CT-scan device. Results Here we present the results of our study carried out at the quai Branly – Jacques Chirac museum (Paris, France) carried out on nearly 150 extra-european artifacts. Our study shows not only the feasibility of such a large-scale non-invasive CT-scan examination in a museum, but also the growing need for such an examination that opens the way to a new disciplinary field for radiology: CT-scan will become almost indispensable and systematic in museum research centers.

Internal anatomy replication in a tribal art statue (Songye, 17th c. AD)

Abstract CT-scan is now an indispensable tool for the study of museum objects. The non-invasive and non-destructive nature of this technique allows a thorough study of artifacts and reveals their internal structures. Here we present the results of a CT-scan examination of a nkishi wooden sculpture from the Songye ethnic group (Democratic Republic of Congo), conserved in the Museum of quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (Inv. 70.2012.29.1.1), Paris, France. This exam put to light considerable data regarding the magical-religious structure of this statue, presently a full internal anatomic replication (a roughly cylindrical cavity developed from the vertex to the anus, with other segmentations from the central duct to the mouth, the umbilicus and both ears). Heterogeneous material, made of successive magical offerings, was present in all the different cavities. This interdisciplinary study of this nkishi statue allowed us to better understand the use of this artifact and so put on light a part of the rites of the Songye ethnic group. This means that the anthropomorphism of the fetishes is pushed to its climax, and that the offerings are literally digested by the statue, as if it were a living being. More, this study highlights the interest of a bio-medical examination of tribal objects for a better understanding of the beliefs in autochthon communities.

Ancient Peruvian textiles in the Vatican Museums and their link to the Musée du Trocadéro collections

The Vatican Museums keep a small collection of about sixty textile fragments mostly Lambayeque, Chimu and Chancay dating back to Late Intermediate Period. Unfortunately, the archaeological provenance of these items is not known. This paper offers a first overview of the history of the collection, describing its contents and, in more details, its most interesting fabrics. We will then suggest that some fragments of the Vatican collection might have been part of textiles once kept in the Musée du Trocadéro, and nowadays preserved in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

Entre um mundo e o dos Outros

O artigo apresenta possibilidades para a descolonização dos processos de musealização utilizando a teoria sobre a magia de Marcel Mauss como instrumento para pensar ritualmente o trabalho técnico de preservação e transmissão de bens culturais. Aplica os conceitos teóricos propostos por Mauss à performance museal em duas instituições distintas: o Musée du quai Branly, em Paris, e o Ilê Obá Ogunté – Sítio de Pai Adão, em Recife, Pernambuco. A partir da observação etnográfica de rituais religiosos e não religiosos nas duas realidades culturais estudadas, traça algumas considerações gerais sobre os processos de profanação nos museus e nos terreiros que caracterizam o rito ocidental da musealização.