The metamorphosis of the
Guimet Museum
-Tirthakar Chanda, University academic,
France
Since January 15, 2001, the Paris museum
world has been enriched by a new venue. First opened in 1889, the Guimet Museum of Asian
art is certainly not new, but the recent refurbishment work on its interior, followed by a
comprehensive rearrangement of its collections, made up of some 45,000 works, has given a
new lease on life to this more than a hundred-year old institution, making it, if its
director, Jean-Francois Jarrige, is to be believed, "one of the world's leading
museums of Asian Art".
Born of the passion of a rich
manufacturer from Lyons, Emile Guimet, for the religions of Classic Antiquity and the
East, this Parisian museum, housed since it first opened in the beautiful neo-classical
building in Place d'ie'na, for the first few years of its life held the private
collections of its founder, primary examples of religious iconography. This religious
emphasis was gradually abandoned after Guimet's death and the museum, attached to the
French Museums Department from 1927, concentrated firmly on Asian arts, that were being
discovered at the time. The transfer of the vast stock of Khmer art from the Trocadero
Indo-Chinese Museum, broken up in 1935, and all the works from the department of Asian art
at the Louvre, in 1945, resulted in confirming the Asian focus of the Guimet Museum.
From that time on the question has arisen as
to how best to display these often outstanding works, which cover a range as great in
time, five thousand years, as in area, from India to Japan. A succession of additional
rooms and an accumulation of collections and donations held in the interest of exhaustive
coverage succeeded only in making an already "labyrinthine" museum impenetrable,
according to its curators.
Rethinking the museum layout:
It was in order to escape from this idea of the museum as collections that refurbishment
was undertaken in the 1990s. These building works, which lasted five years, have radically
altered the interior of the building. The floor area has increased from 10, 236 square
meter to over 12, 709 square meter, while the inner courtyard, once more bathed in
daylight and surrounded by high balconies and superposed gallery floors, has rediscovered
its central structural an functional role. Most importantly, the new design has made it
possible to rethink the layout of the museum, which is today organized in a simple way,
based on a twofold approach to the displays, chronological and geographical.
On th ground floor are exhibited the
collections of items from India and South-East Asia, while the art of China, Japan and
Korea in all their glittering glory are displayed on the upper floors. Visitors now pass
through each area in historical order, from the oldest pieces to the most recent.
Spread over five floors, the new arrangement
gives more than its due to the Indianized cultures of South-East Asia whose richness is
reflected not just in the Brahmin inspired statues and carvings-pure poetry in stoneware
or bronze-but in the decorative features of Buddhist temples and monuments that recall the
splendors that were Angkor Vat, Cambodia, and Borobudur, Indonesia.
Cultural crossbreeding: On entering the
museum, the visitor comes face to face with all the exuberance of Indian mythology
represented by a monumental seven headed cobra, straight from Preah Khan "Giants
Causeway" of Angkor. What better introduction to the mixed cultures of the
Indo-Chinese peninsula, the fruit of the encounter of Indian religions and languages with
local traditions and ways of being!
But it is Buddhism that serves as the link
between the different floors, between the Indianized world and the area of Sino-Japanese
culture. The superb pink sandstone torso of Buddha, with finely carved drapery exhibited
in the Indian Room, like the Bronze statue of "Bodhisattva" meditating, someone
who aspires to status of the Buddha, from the Korean collection, the celebrated Tibetan
painted fabrics or the famous "tang-ka" on the first floor which relate episodes
from the life of the "enlightened", reiterate a single message, a unity of
vision beyond very different aesthetics. The richness of upper rooms lies too in secular,
decorative objects, such as ceramics, furniture or the superb Quing dynasty screen (1621)
with which the tour ends.
It is not truly over, for the public who
crowd in such numbers around the display cabinets and stands of this metamorphosed museum
seem dumbstruck, awed to paralysis, some, perhaps, marked for life by the magnificence,
mystery and voluptuousness conveyed by the works exhibited, even those apparently most
banal.
Come Together
By Volker Klein, Germany
Asia and Europe are discussing their
common future and getting closer at the IV Europe Asia Forum
Even in the 1980s there was pretty much unanimity that the 21 st century would be
Asia's era. But when the speculation bubble burst in Japan and stagnation set in which has
still to come to an end, the experts were no longer were so sure about their predictions.
Things changed completely when the financial crisis, which began in 1997 in Thailand,
seemed to throw all the so-called little tigers into disarray. All of a sudden nobody was
talking about the superiority of the Asian economy and Confucian values. Then came the
rise of the new superpower China, proudly displaying its double-digit growth rates and
pursuing a conservative currency policy which made it seem globally responsible in
economic terms, something which brought it the recognition of the West. As of 1999 the
ASEAN state found things picking up, and Asia once again an interesting place for
investors.
The future of relations between Asia and
Europe was the topic of the fourth Europe Asia forum which took place at the beginning of
May at the Bavarian state representative office in Berlin. The event was sponsored by the
Herbert Quandt Foundation, the Singapore based Institute of Policy Studies, and the
Asia-Europe Foundation. The forum was held under the name, " Asia and
Europe-Partnership for the 21 st Century". The basic tone of the high ranking Asia
delegates at the forum was timbered by calls for an increased presence, more
understanding, more investment and above all, more political involvement on the part of
the Europeans. Specific praise was given to the European initiative on the Korean
peninsula that led to a normalization of the relations between North Korea and almost
every European Union State. Delegates also note, however, that Asia also expected the
European economic power to make convincing efforts towards achieving multilateralism and
an open yet well-regulated world trade regime, especially in the face of the renewed
tendency towards bilateralism coming out of Washington.
The Forum itself was divided into three topic
segments: "Asia's Economic Turnaround and Opportunities in the New Economy"';
"Prospects for Europe's Economy and Political Integration and European Union
Enlargement"; and " Political Dialogue between Asia and Europe after
Seoul"'. A multifaceted discussion developed under the leadership of Horst Teltschik.
Teltschik was security advisor under former federal chancellor Helmut Kohl and is now
chairman of the Herbert Quandt Foundation, an organization closely associated with BMW.
Interest initially concentrated on the
economic future of China, Japan and the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. China's delegates made
representations that their country was striving for growth of 7%, that inflation was under
control, and that China's entry into the WTO would also bring major benefits to the EU
states. They agreed that China remained a developing country and claimed some of the
privileges reserved to countries with such a status, and that their country obviously had
no intention of playing power politics with its neighbors. Japan remains a cause of
concern precisely because its economy-still five times larger than China's-is of immense
importance in terms of trade, investment, and credit, for the other countries of the
region. Europeans and Asian of were one voice in this concern, and there was some regret
that Japan was represented by an extremely competent academic, but no body from government
who might have gone some way to assuaging the participants doubts vis-à-vis Japan's
willingness to reform. As a result the impression was left that Japan's new premier Mr.
Koizumi, was indeed following the right path in removing structural weaknesses but that
this would probably take something in the order of ten years to complete. South Korea, on
the other hand, was seen as on the way to getting its problems-low corporate profits, over
capacity, and high debt-in hand. Indonesia's representative drew a positive balance for
the last couple of years. Nevertheless, he admitted that his country's major political
problem, the disastrous duo of corruption and nepotism-was still in need of a permanent
solution. He finished his remarks by recognizing that his country would have to be more or
less remade. As a whole, Singapore's delegate acknowledged that ASEAN, whose weaknesses
became apparent during the financial crisis of 1997, would need the political will to draw
the right conclusions from the mistakes of the recent past and invited Europeans to take
up the role of investors and trading partners in a manner befitting an economic world
power.
HEINRICH VON PIERER, the head of Siemens and
the chairman of the Asian-Pacific committee of German Industry, provided the proper
perspective on two phenomena from the recent past. He noted that the severe losses which
so many new economy companies had suffered in the stock markets did not mean things were
over. He said the future, however, would belong to those companies which possess wells of
capability and productivity and which could use the means of modern communications to
perfect them. Secondly, he refused to believe that the protest movements, which had made
them seen in Seattle and Quebeck, could stop the triumphant progress of globalization. But
he said that every company, which took up a position as a global player, was obligated to
be a good corporate citizen, wherever it was doing business. On the issue of whether the
EU intended to reach a trade agreement with ASEAN, the EU trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy,
emphasized his preference for a multi-lateral regulatory organ. In this case the WTO, in
whose new round the EU was determined to play a major role. He said the EU took a great
deal of interest in the stability of Asia.
In response to the firmly presented desire
for European unanimity, reliable centralized institutions, and equality with the United
States, Lord Douglas Hurd said that the EU could not be, and did not want to be, a
geopolitical rival to the US, nor did it want to settle for the role of a satellite to it.
Rather, he said, EU was striving towards a partnership within which, naturally, there
would have to be room for divergent opinions. But he also said that the EU would have to
do right by the United States' call for more equal burden sharing. Lord Hurd said it was
unacceptable to leave the conduct of war to the US while the EU was happy to play
dishwasher. When it came to the issue of European unanimity Lord Hurd pointed to the
independence of European states which had grown over the centuries. He wanted to hear no
more of a US of Europe. He said that there were much larger differences between Sweden and
Italy than there were between Connecticut and Virginia. He reminded his listeners that
there could not be a uniform decision-making committee for every important issue and that
some questions, now as ever, would have to be decided in national capitals.
There can be no doubt that Europe and Asia
came a lot closer together at the Forum. The discussion bore witness to openness, but also
the cordiality of the relationship which has grown over the years between the parties.
Especially impressive was the summary presented by Professor Kohs, which appealed to the
European understanding of Asia's various cultural traditions. |
