Pariscapitale.com / Arts & Music / Musée Guimet: Right this Way...

Welcome to pariscapitale, your guide to cultural events in Paris

Performing Arts

Dance, Opera

Visual Arts

Music

Classical

French singers

Jazz, Blues

Pop Music

Rock, Techno, Rap

World Music

Musée Guimet: Right this Way...

Closed since February 1996, the Musée Guimet reopened its doors at the end of January 2002 after a monumental renovation by architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin, who have shed some serious light on the remarkable 3,000-piece collection. Now the shifting regions of white and gray highlighting these exceptional works inspire thought and serenity, exactly as the museum’s founder, humanist Emile Guimet, might have imagined it. This industry tycoon spent nearly his entire life crusading for the establishment and enhancement of a center focusing on ancient Asian civilizations.

Any past visitor will remember the unthinkable labyrinth the Musée Guimet used to be before the remodeling: a dizzying muddle with works piled on top of each other. Now, however, one of the most beautiful collections of Asian art in the world has room to breathe…and so do we. Allow yourself several hours to discover the treasures of this tranquil temple, founded in 1889 by the loveable Emile Guimet. The son of a manufacturer (the inventor of artificial ultramarine blue), Emile Guimet could easily have satisfied his appetite for archaeology and exoticism with his father’s money; instead, he took over one of the family factories in 1860 and created his own company.
At the forefront of a vast industrial empire, Guimet was known for his humanist spirit, which propelled his personal research and fueled his desire to promote Eastern studies with the creation of a religion museum.

This wooden Buddha dates from the eleventh or twelfth century

His penchant for travel and collecting resulted from a life-changing visit to Egypt, at a time when many people were developing an interest in classical antiquity, Egypt, and the great civilizations of the world. After his trip, Emile Guimet began amassing objects that, he explained, may have been mute but had a lot to teach him.

A Center of Learning
After attending many international conferences on anthropology and archaeology, Emile Guimet discovered the Copenhagen ethnological museum, an inspiration for his own project. He took off on a collecting trip around the world, visiting Egypt, Greece, Japan, India, and China. Upon his return, he presented his plunder at the 1878 World’s Fair in an exhibit called Religions of the Far East, such a huge success that he swiftly built a museum in Lyon, inaugurated by Jules Ferry in 1879.

A guardian god from a Japanese temple during the Kamakura era (beginning of the 13th century), made of lacquered Cyprus wood. The fascinating eyes are made of encrusted rock crystal.

In 1882 Guimet moved the museum to Paris, attracted by the proximity of many scholarly institutions. Inaugurated in November 1889, it was mostly devoted to the gods of India, China, Japan, Egypt, Greece, and the Roman world. Its founder perceived it as more of a research center than a museum, with an extensive library at its core.

Mata-Hari on Display
All this didn’t exclude a certain spectacular spirit, like when all of Paris marveled as Madame MacLeod, the future Mata-Hari, performed Brahman dance right in the middle of the museum library! Guimet also organized Buddhist ceremonies, complete with llamas and Japanese monks, for a dumbfounded public including the likes of Sadi Carnot, Degas, Clemenceau, and Pasteur.

In the Khmer room, bathed by gentle lighting, an astonishing Vajimukha from Cambodia (10th century).

As Guimet got older after World War I, the museum focused less on the religions of antiquity and more on Asian artwork and artifacts, furnished by Guimet himself, private donations, and by new discovery missions. Guimet died in 1920, and throughout the 1930s Joseph Hackin completely reorganized the museum, which developed the most comprehensive collection of art from India and Southeast Asia.

After World War II, under the direction of René Grousset, the influence of Guimet’s heritage waned, as religion left the picture and the museum became the great center of Asian art in France. Through several exchanges with the Louvre, the Guimet acquired Chinese and Japanese works while giving up its Greco-Roman and Egyptian religious art. The building itself was altered to incorporate the Grandidier donation of Chinese porcelain and Japanese art.

But the scholarly tradition remained important to Philippe Stern, curator between 1954 and 1965 who developed both the library and the photographic archives. His successor, Jeanne Auboyer, placed more emphasis on classic Indian art and central Asia in general.

In 1968, an adjacent building was restored to house a reconstructed Buddhist pantheon, brought from Japan by Emile Guimet. For the most recent renovation, the current curator Jean-François Jarrige wanted to evoke the nature of the museum as Guimet had intended it: within the prestigious web of Parisian museums, a tribute to the importance of great Asian civilizations.

USEFUL INFORMATION

Musée des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet
6, place d’Iéna,
Paris 16e

Tél. 01 56 52 53 00

From 10am to 6pm

museeguimet.fr

[Contact-us] [My account]