What else to say about the MQB? Re-centring anthropology in art and French museum practices: A vision from an ex-boursier

Abstract

This short piece investigates how “art” and “ethnography” have developed as two separated practices in ten years of existence of the Musée du quai Branly Jacques Chirac (MQB) and how “politics” has been widely missing. Writing from a personal experience as a postdoctoral ex-boursier and building on recent essays about the genesis of the museum, the author seeks to identify points of raptures existent not only in the MQB as a cultural institution but also within the system of French ethnology, which does not leave sufficient space for art to dialogue with ethnography, nor for politics to dialogue with aesthetics. Rather than depicting the MQB as a “post-ethnographic museum” (de l’Estoile 2015), the author identifies in the Musée a good terrain for creating an “ethno-art-graphic” museum, where creative ethnographic collections will eventually make both art and anthropology.