Paris Primitive
Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly
Paris Primitive recounts the massive reconfiguration of Paris’s museum world that resulted from Chirac’s dream, set against a backdrop of personal and national politics, intellectual life, and the role of culture in French society. Along with exposing the machinations that led to the MQB’s creation, Sally Price addresses the thorny questions it raises about the legacy of colonialism, the balance between aesthetic judgments and ethnographic context, and the role of institutions of art and culture in an increasingly diverse France. Anyone with a stake in the myriad political, cultural, and anthropological issues raised by the MQB will find Price’s account fascinating.
“Paris Primitive is a delicious combination of art, anthropology, and politics, as well as an intricate dissection of French alliances and institutions. Along the way, in this well-written and fast-paced narrative, Sally Price also illuminates the ethics of acquisition and display and the battle between aesthetics and ethnography. What a tale! Everyone involved in cultural representation should read this book.”—Lucy R. Lippard, author of Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America
“At once wry and serious, Paris Primitive offers a unique backstage look at the art world, French cultural politics, and the shifting value of other people’s artifacts. The result combines a captivating story with rich anthropological analysis. If only all museums had a book like this!”—Peter W. Redfield, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana
“Paris Primitive offers a wide-ranging, informed, and historically well-grounded analysis of the ideology that undergirds French cultural identity and its management of difference. Writing deftly and lightly, with an eye for the utterly telling anecdote, Sally Price avoids the pretensions that could overwhelm such a study and allows us to comprehend the building of a museum as an eminently human enterprise.”—Fred Myers, New York University, author of Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art
Where to Begin
JACQUES AND JACQUES
The Primal Moment
The President’s Secret Garden
The Passionate Connoisseur
Good-bye, Columbus
MUSEUMS IN THE CITY OF LIGHT
The State of Culture
The Grandest Museum in the World
THE MOVE TO THE LOUVRE
Down with Hierarchy
Getting Started
Cohabitation
In-House Rumblings
A Dream Come True
Artifactual Question Marks
THE ORGAN DONORS
Trouble at the Trocadéro
Resistance Movement
Colonies and Crocodiles
Musical Chairs
AN ANTI-PALACE ON THE SEINE
The Turn to Concrete
Preparing the Transplants
Behind the Hairy Wall
Glass, Gardens, and Aborigines
A River Runs Through It
Art of Darkness
Epilogue: Cultures in Dialogue?
BACK MATTER
An American in Paris
Contributing Voices
Notes
Bibliography
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Art: Art Criticism | Art--General Studies | Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Art
History: European History
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