The Quai Branly museum - Jacques Chirac, is located on the banks of the Seine, near the Eiffel Tower. It is dedicated to showing the importance of the Arts and Civilizations of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, at the crossroads of multiple cultural, religious, and historical influences.
Collections and cultural activities of the Quai Branly museum
In this place of scientific and artistic dialogue, exhibitions, performances, conferences, workshops, and screenings punctuate the cultural program.
In its collections, the Quai Branly museum includes 300,000 works from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, making up the collection that the museum's mission is to conserve, document, and enrich.
Building bridges between cultures
From Oceania to Asia, from Africa to the Americas, the permanent collections present 3,500 works of art in a geographical journey without compartmentalization. The proximity of these works allows for an unprecedented dialogue between the cultures of the four continents.
The museum organizes about ten temporary exhibitions a year, whose programming is characterized by a diversity of approaches and areas of exploration.
The "Quai Branly museum" - its construction
The Quai Branly Museum, designed by Jean Nouvel for nearly 233 million euros and inaugurated in 2006 by President Jacques Chirac, comprises four buildings with a total surface area of 40,600 m2.
The bridge museum (main building) is covered with screen-printed glass facades and partially clad in wood. As the architect wanted to make partial reference to the nearby Eiffel Tower, its structure is a 3,200-ton metal bridge fixed by 500,000 bolts, which is supported at a height of 10 m by the two East and West pillars and 26 intermediate steel pilings, in order to respect the green space easement of the city of Paris. It mainly houses permanent and temporary exhibitions.
This main building is complemented by 3 buildings and a garden. The latter occupies 17,500 m2 of the 27,700 m2 of land. Protected from the noise of the quays by a glass palisade and planted with 169 trees, 900 shrubs, and 70,200 ferns and grasses, it is composed of paths, terraces, small hills, paths paved with torrent stones, ponds conducive to meditation, and reverie and high grasses or Poaceae, refuges for a small urban and passing fauna - while being a few hundred meters from the Eiffel Tower.
ANNEX of the Quai Branly Museum at the Louvre Museum: the Pavillon des Sessions
Since April 13, 2000, a selection of 120 works from the collections belonging to the Quai Branly museum has been on display at the Pavillon des Sessions, within the Louvre Museum. This should allow visitors to the Louvre who do not have the time to visit the Quai Branly museum to have a synthetic view of the Early Arts.
Selected by Jacques Kerchache, these works were intended to be an embassy. Initially temporary, it became permanent after the opening of the Quai Branly Museum. The interior architecture of 1,200 square meters, offers a consequent space. Jacques Kerchache's ambition was to show the visitor to the Louvre that, just like the great European classical art, the viewer could be moved by the formal beauty of non-European art, beyond any ethnological explanation. For Jacques Kerchache, "the essential thing is the plastic quality of a work, whatever its origin or provenance. What touches me the most is to perceive beyond a form, the creative gesture of an artist".
The "Quai Branly museum-Jacques Chirac" is located on our recommended itinerary of the "Eiffel Tower to the Arc de Triomphe". You can therefore after visiting this museum easily reach the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysées by following this itinerary that you will find by clicking here.
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