QUAI BRANLY MUSEUM PARIS

The new museum dedicated to 'arts premiers' or the often-ignored arts of non-European civilisations is, many would say, Chirac's only achievement in his reign. The building designed by Jean Nouvel is astonishing: a huge edifice on stilts that surprises with its deep colours and baroque forms. Reached via a long circular ramp, the permanent collection is divided into four continents (Africa, Asia, Americas & Oceania), separated by a large winding river. Most impressive are the sections devoted to the Americas, with superb feather head-dresses, painted cowhides and Aztec sculptures, and Oceania, with its gigantic figurative carved wooden columns from the Pacific.

The old collections of the Museum of Arts of Africa and Oceania like that of the Museum de l'Homme, are here restored and developed with new orientations. Thus, the Asian objects speak more about the daily life to us than piled up artistic antiquities inside Cernuschi. A geographical course is imagined in order to connect each continent by its musics, its rites, the whole accompanied by a teaching multi-media support.  Some huts will shelter certain selected objects in order to discover them more closely.  In addition, 120 masterpieces currently installed in the House of the Sessions of the Louvre have joined this plate.