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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lCultures reign on the SeineBy Rosemary Neill 12 October 2004 - The temporary offices of one of France's most ambitious new cultural projects, the Musee du Quai Branly, could hardly be more removed from the timeless elegance and glamour of the city's established museums. When The Australian visits, Branly's staff are housed in southern Paris in a multi-storey "industrial hotel" smothered by dust and strewn with heavy machinery. Smoke stacks belch dense white smoke in the near distance. From here, the city of light seems shrouded in grey. But if his temporary work space is far from salubrious, the museum's managing director and chairman, Stephane Martin, is resolutely upbeat about his institution and the seminal role Australian indigenous art is to play in it. When it opens in 2006, the museum - 39,000 sqm of it - will sit on the banks of the Seine, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Dedicated to non-Western art, it is a pet project of French President Jacques Chirac, who believes that for too long, art from Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas has been too easily dismissed - even in a city as culturally rich as Paris - as little more than exotic curiosities. The Musee du Quai Branly, says the famously culturally literate Chirac, will realise "the dream of collaboration between cultures" and occupy "a position at the forefront of the international alliance of museological institutions". When it comes to attracting tourists, the straight-talking Martin says he wants the new institution to compete with the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay. One of Branly's most arresting features will be up to 1000sqm of ceiling, straddling three or four storeys, to be designed by handpicked indigenous Australian artists. This week, it was confirmed that eight artists - four men and four women - are to work on the project, which co-curator Brenda Croft describes as "the most significant international indigenous visual art commission from Australia". The painters, including some of the most prominent names in the indigenous art world, are Lena Nyadbi (WA), Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford (WA), Judy Watson (Queensland), Gulumbu Yunupingu (NT), John Mawurndjul (NT), Tommy Watson (WA), Ningura Napurrula (NT) and the late Michael Riley (NSW), whose existing work will be represented. Martin explains that the museum, designed by revered European architect Jean Nouvel, will comprise four buildings with low-key facades, so that the visual interest will come from the painted ceilings. He admits the French were going to engage decorators to do the ceiling, but were urged by Australians to "work with real artists ... of course it represents a huge amount of painting". Indigenous curators Hetti Perkins and Croft, the Australia Council and two local architects are helping to co-ordinate the project. Croft, who has met Nouvel and Martin in Paris, says: "The museum is absolutely a flagship thing for the French Government, so we have been hoping the Australian Government would be equally behind it." This month, following marathon and what Croft calls "sensitive" negotiations, the federal Government announced that it would contribute $300,000 towards the project. Croft, the senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia, explains that the Australian-designed ceilings will be in the administrative part of the building, which won't be accessible to the public, but will be seen from the street. Nouvel wants these ceilings to serve as "an enticement to come in". The Musee du Quai Branly will boast a collection of about 300,000 objects - including Aboriginal artefacts and bark paintings. Only 4000 of these objects have previously been on public display. That leaves hundreds of thousands of pieces that need to be cleaned, tagged and logged on to a computerised data base. There will be up to 12 temporary exhibitions a year, and at least half will have independent curators - potentially including curators from Australia. As well as emphasising the aesthetic and expressive qualities of non-Western art, the museum will serve as a centre for scientific research and debate. It will include a cinema and library, with foreign researchers doing stints of up to four years there. Martin, a former magistrate, explains that many of the exhibitions will be unapologetically subjective, and will reflect contemporary as well as traditional aspects of non-European cultures. Such exhibitions would not aim to be "comprehensive models" of Peruvian, Chinese or indigenous cultures: "We will not have to be a place that gives a statement that is very clear, very univocal," he says. (Similarly, Croft stresses that the ceiling project won't be a comprehensive survey of indigenous art, believing that "would look like a dog's breakfast".) Asked to nominate the highlights of the museum's indigenous Australian collection, Martin mentions a collection of bark paintings collated in the early 1960s by French anthropologist Karel Kupka, and an important collection of turingas, intricately carved identity tags bestowed on indigenous people at birth. Martin says that because they are sacred, the turingas have never been displayed in Australia, where there is a risk relatives of deceased owners of the tags might see them. He says that in mounting displays of culturally sensitive objects, "we want to show the highest level of respect for people's beliefs". Adds a spokesman for the museum: "The museum is not just about how the Europeans viewed these cultures, but also how these cultures viewed the Europeans, including colonists." Even so, the terms "primal art" and "primitive art" are used throughout the museum's literature. Martin explains that "'primitive' in French is not considered pejorative because for someone with some education, it connects very directly to art history". He points out that some of the greatest European painters, including Picasso, went through primitive phases. "Now, we mostly use [the term] 'art premiere' and I dislike it absolutely because it gives a sense of hierarchy," he says. He also thinks it's too politically correct. Nonetheless, he concedes that for the French layperson, "primitive means naked in the forest, it doesn't mean Giotto". Hence, when naming the museum, he settled on the "strange" but neutral title Musee du Quai Branly -- signifying its location, rather than its raison d'etre. Croft says those at the French end of this project have sometimes betrayed a "primitivist" view of indigenous art. However, she also thinks that "they're trying to deal with it, and they know they have to come up to speed". She encountered less resistance to the painting model she took to Paris than she was expecting: while it refers to the museum's tradition-oriented collection, it also has striking contemporary flourishes. Croft says that she and Perkins are determined to show the French that "indigenous art is not static and that it represents some of the most excellent work coming out of Australia today". Rosemary Neill flew to Paris as a guest of the French Government. Source: The Australian related links:
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