What else to say about the MQB? Re-centring anthropology in art and French museum practices: A vision from an <em>ex-boursier</em>
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3398
Questa breve nota critica investiga come “arte” e “etnografia” si siano sviluppate negli ultimi dieci anni del Musée du quai Branly Jacques Chirac (MQB) e di come ci si sia dimenticati della “politica”. Partendo da un’esperienza personale come boursier postdottorale e basandosi su lavori recenti riguardanti la genesi del museo, l’autrice identifica dei punti di rottura esistenti non soltanto nel MQB come istituzione culturale ma anche nel sistema dell’etnologia francese che non lascia spazio all’arte per dialogare con l’etnografia, né alla politica per dialogare con l’estetica. Piuttosto che presentare il MQB come un museo “post-etnografico” (de l’Estoile 2015), l’autrice identifica nel Musée un buon terreno per creare un museo “ethno-art-grafico” dove le collezioni creative ed etnografiche possano finalmente creare entrambe, arte e antropologia.
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What else to say about the MQB? Re-centring anthropology in art and French museum practices: A vision from an <em>ex-boursier</em>
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What else to say about the MQB? Re-centring anthropology in art and French museum practices: A vision from an <em>ex-boursier</em>
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                                                                                   SAGGI

What else to say about the MQB?
Re-centring anthropology in art and French museum practices:
A vision from an ex-boursier
Giulia BATTAGLIA
École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris



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 ex -
perience 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 mu-
seum” (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 eventu-
ally make both art and anthropology.

KEYWORDS: ART, ETHNOGRAPHY, POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION, MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY, FRANCE.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giulia Battaglia
What else to say about the MQB? Re-centring anthropology in art and French museum practices:
A vision from an ex-boursier
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 169-182.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3398
170                                                                GIULIA BATTAGLIA




   When I was asked to write a short essay about the 10 years of the Musée
du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac (henceforth MQB), I did not hesitate to accept
but immediately after I wondered: “what can I say about the MQB? Why me?
Am I the right person to talk about ten years of activities of this institution?”
Much has been written about the MQB and too many have already described
its exhibition space (di Lorenzo 2006; Amato 2006; Lebovics 2007; Clifford
2007; Price 2007; Clemente 2008; Lusini 2004), explained its wider depart-
mental structure (cfr. Taylor 2006), critiqued its institutional choices (cfr.
Price 2007; Clifford 2007), contextualised its existence within the history of
anthropology, museums and the French public (cfr. de L’Estoile 2007, 2015)
and discussed its politics within the global dispute between ethnographic
museums and postcolonial history (Lusini 2004; Phillips 2011; Lattanzi et al.
2013; Rossi 2015). Reviews of reviewers already exist (cfr. Thomas 2008;
Shelton 2009). Hence, what else to say about the MQB?
   The colleague who asked me to write this piece then told me, “you can
write a review from your position as an ex-boursier”. I then stopped for a
second, felt an emotion and attachment to the Musée and its research de-
partment and got persuaded. My view certainly differs from other comment-
ators but also from others ex-boursiers. In the “genealogy” of fellowships
provided by the MQB for young scholars, I have been one of the very few who
has been selected without coming from the French academic system. As an
Italian by birth and primary education, who studied and worked in England
and found herself working (and now permanently living) in France, with time
I have realised to have developed a particular regard on the relationship
between anthropology, cultural institutions, art practices, postcolonial and
postmodern theories as they exist and are practiced in France vis-à-vis other
parts of the world and surely the Anglo-Saxon academic world. It is from this
position that today I feel I can actually discuss ten years of existence of this
museum. There is in fact the need to change the “lens” of the existing ana-
lyses of the MQB and pay attention to the role that French ethnology (and
thus the research department of the museum) has (or has not) played in con-
tinuously divorcing “art” from “anthropology”.
   As the pioneer director of the MQB research department, Anne-Christine
Taylor, explains in a 2007 essay, the research department has always had a
minimal importance within the wider structure of the museum. This became
evident during my MQB fellowship. For example, if we, boursiers, wanted to
conduct a new research inside the museum which was not about the museum
collections, or to apply for internal funding to develop “theories” in anthro-
pology rather than museum practices, we were obliged to justify such


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WHAT ELSE TO SAY ABOUT THE MQB?                                                 171


choices. Proposals had to be approved by the head of direction (and not from
the research department) and were not to harm the museum’s visibility. In
other words, it was as if the research department had to work for the MQB
(and hence the departments of conservation, communication, collection)
rather than along with other departments and even with the direction of the
museum (with the possibility to influencing the politics of representations of
the museum).
   According to Benoît de L’Estoile, the limited power that the research de-
partment may have inside the museum is probably due to the initial drive of
the MQB – that is, to make an end to the traditional anthropological
paradigm of the French musée-laboratoire (as promoted by the historical
Musée de l’Homme) for what de L’Estoile has more recently called a “post-
ethnographic” museum (de L’Estoile 2015). As far as I have experienced in
numerous conversations with French anthropologists directly or indirectly
connected to the MQB, today this view is widely shared and accepted. Never-
theless, de L’Estoile’s point may be limiting for those who have been closely
interested in the late 1960s Parisian explosion of the market of “arts premi-
ers”, or in the international debates concerning the role of ethnographic col-
lections in museum practices. In this case, the de-centralisation of the re-
search department of the MQB should rather be connected to the entrance of
“objects from the ex-colonies” into the Parisian galleries. These objects at-
tracted the attention of Euro-American collectors who started to “invest” on
this “new form” of art (by strongly impacting on museum policies and prac-
tices) and from the 1980s onwards, also fostered the development of interna-
tional debates concerning the “ethnographic” value of museum collections
(cfr. Somé 1998; Bonnain 2001; Lusini 2004).
   Whilst the MQB has been already discussed from multiple perspectives,
what is still missing is a review, interpretation and commentary coming from
the annual ex-boursiers. In the following pages I shall focus on this lacuna. I
will pay attention to my own vision as an ex-boursier and build on de
L’Estoile’s (2015) argument that sees the MQB as a “post-ethnographic” mu-
seum. While questioning such definition, I shall discuss a much more com-
plex and persisting problematic that concerns the separated importance that
“ethnography”, “art” and “politics” continue having inside the museum at
an institutional level vis-à-vis a possible interconnection between the three.
In addition, I will highlight how this separation also persists inside the dis-
cipline of anthropology, as it is practiced in France, and thus inside the MQB
research department. It is precisely the lack of interconnection between art,
politics and ethnography that, I will eventually argue, fosters a de-central-
isation of the research department (and hence anthropology) in the institu-
tional roles and choices of the museum.

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172                                                                 GIULIA BATTAGLIA


A vision from an ex-boursier
   In the years that followed the opening of the MQB an extensive polemic
arose. The international dispute was mainly focused around the “aesthetics”
vs the “scientific” use and value of museum objects and collections and its
corollary debate about the role of anthropologists, conservateurs and art-col-
lectors in the “spectacular” exhibition choices pursued by the museum (cfr.
Amato 2006; Lebovics 2007; Clifford 2007; Price 2007; Clemente 2008). The
polemic also developed around questions of “cultural diversity” and the
“dialogue between cultures” as pronounced by Jacques Chirac with the open-
ing of the museum in 2006 (cfr. Lusini 2004; Di Lorenzo 2006; Clifford 2007;
Price 2007; Dias 2008; Clemente 2008; Digard 2008). Finally, the debate con-
cerned the specificity of the French “cultural” public (Clifford 2007; de
L’Estoile 2007, 2015) and interrogations about the residues of colonialism
and thus of ethnocentrism and French universalism (cfr. Amato 2006; Price
2007; Dias 2008; Thomas 2008; Shelton 2009).
   In contrast, among the French cultural and scientific debate, the polemic
was rooted on the history of French ethnology (cfr. de L’Estoile 2015), inter-
connected with museum practices or what was known as musée-laboratoire
(see also Taylor 2008). In fact, part of the dispute was a sort of “comparison”
between the aesthetic and academic role that the collections played at the
“new” Musée du Quai Branly vis-à-vis those of the “old” Musée de l’Homme.
As Benoît de L’Estoile clearly explains, with the MQB the French ethnology
has enlarged the possibility to go beyond the Levi-Straussian legacy of “eth-
nographic collections” for an approach based more on “creation” coming
from the “human soul” (2015: 86). In other words, the emphasis was no
longer on “exotic objects” but on how to give voice and light to the soul of
those œuvres exhibited in museums like the MQB – that is, to the human
forms of “creations”, rather than “facts” coming from a distant other (cfr.
also Ingold 2011).
   If we follow the analysis of de L’Estoile (2015), we may say that with the
MQB we have experienced the end of the ethnological paradigm of French
anthropology connected to museum collections and hence to the “illusion”
of “representing” a particular culture and creating an “encyclopaedic know-
ledge” of human cultures (Taylor 2008: 681). In other words, we enter a
paradigm based more on “creativity” and “interpretation” as for other exist-
ing “genres” of museums – namely, the museums of modern and contem-
porary art (cfr. von Bismarck et al. 2017). De L’Estoile identifies in this shift a
new era of museums, which he precisely calls the “post-ethnographic mu-
seums”. Yet, to what extent this was true from my experience of a boursier at
the MQB?

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WHAT ELSE TO SAY ABOUT THE MQB?                                                  173


   During the period of my 2013-14 postdoctoral fellowship at the MQB I felt
that focusing only on my own research and yet being based in a nice office
along with other (post)doctoral scholars, also focusing on their own re-
search, was a bit limiting for that context. Hence, along with Arnaud Dubois
(who at that time was still working for his PhD on anthropology of colour),
we decided to complement our individual research, with a small project
about the museum itself and its way of including “images” in its institutional
discourse and departmental practices. Between 2013 and 2014, we then con-
ducted a fieldwork inside various departments of the museum, investigating
the role that “images” played in this cultural institution. It was not easy to
“enter” other departments of the museums and pose questions about their
conceptualisation and use of “images” in their practice (e.g. the image of an
object for the conservateurs; the image of the cultural institution or of a par-
ticular collection for the communication department; or the image as a con-
crete object of art as for the curator of the photographic collection, etc.).
While individuals were very pleased to share their work and perspective with
us during informal meetings that we organised in the museum over several
months, they were quite reluctant to put in question institutional choices
publically. This became clearer when after our data collection, we selected a
number of interested speakers for a panel that we coordinated at the British
Museum for the 2014 RAI photography and anthropology conference and
asked them to write an abstract for such event. In the process, we were
warned that our project risked not to be approved by the head of direction –
we would have not been funded to participate in the conference in London.
This was because the project did not aim “to study” a collection of images at
the MQB but “to interrogate” and “analyse” the value that “images” played
vis-à-vis objects in the discourses and practices of different departments of
the museum. In other words, there was the risk that through our project the
image of the MQB at an institutional level could be questioned.
   After several months of debates, visits and negotiations with different in-
dividuals and departments, we managed to obtain funding for our research
and presented our work at the RAI conference at the British Museum. Among
other things, what emerged through the debate was that in the MQB institu-
tional discourse persists a dichotomy between “creative arts” vs “objective
ethnography”, which strongly impacts individual departmental practices.
Our research demonstrated that there was no synthesis of the “ethnographic
creation” and the “ethnographic collection” across departmental practices,
as de L’Estoile’s (2015) put forward in his analysis. Rather, we found that the
MQB’s institutional choices continue to hierarchically separating these two


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174                                                                           GIULIA BATTAGLIA


approaches, impacting on departmental practices and discourses as well as
on the use of images in the Musée’s exhibition space. Why such enduring
separation then? A detour through the MQB’s original development will help
us to elucidate.
   After a crucial dispute about the nature and form of the upcoming mu-
seum, when the project of the MQB was approved, the idea eventually re-
ceived a “blessed” by two important (but discursively oppositional) person-
alities, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Kerchache. Lévi-Strauss and Ker-
chache were respectively representatives of two schools of thoughts separ-
ated from each other: the “French ethnology” and the “arts premiers”. In line
with this “separation”, the names of these two personalities have given birth
to two important MQB auditoriums. In other words, “art” and “ethnography”
found for the first time in France a place where to coexist together. Yet, if
they started to co-exist in the same cultural place, I would argue that they
have also continued to be kept separated as two distinctive spaces.
   This is the reason why despite the co-existence of these two practices, the
MQB has over the years continued falling into the enduring debate of “eth-
nographic” vs “artistic” interpretation. And this is also why, images continue
to be used as “supportive” materials to objects or as abstract installations
disconnected from the rest of the environment, as our 2013-14 research in-
side the museum also proved1. As Clifford (2007) among others, pointed out,
ethnographic information is only present in the audio-guides and on some
“instructional” ethnographic films placed next to the objects. Yet, neither
audio-guides nor “instructional” ethnographic films are necessarily some-
thing that visitors like to consult when they visit a museum. Instead, other
commentators have added, an emphasis on the “beauty” of an object along
with abstract visual installations seems to be privileged, “misguiding” the
visitors via the world of “spectacle” rather than science (cfr. Di Lorenzo
2006; Lebovics 2007; Clifford 2007; Price 2007; Digard 2008; Clemente
2008). Today, anthropologists like myself specialised on contemporary visual
art practices, may instead criticise that images and sound should neither be
treated as “supportive” materials to objects nor abstract installation but as
also objects themselves of both aesthetic and ethnographic value which con-
stantly calls for serious anthropological attentions (cfr. Cox et al. 2016; Four-
mentraux 2016; Battaglia 2018).

1. I have further developed this point on a paper called Ethnographic Film in Museum Practices:
Image, Object and Archive presented in 2015 for the symposium Film in Ethnographic Exhibi-
tions held at the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. Cfr. www.academia.edu/-
20430946/Ethnographic_Film_as_Image-Object_in_Museum_Practices


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WHAT ELSE TO SAY ABOUT THE MQB?                                                  175


    Things have been gradually changing in the museum but not yet to over-
come the classic dichotomy “art vs ethnography”. In this respect, I would say
that until unless art stops being perceived as separated from ethnography
(and vice versa ethnography separated from art), the MQB will continue be-
ing quite far from making a change in museum paradigms and rather mar-
ginalise anthropology (and hence the already existent research department
where I worked) from wider institutional choices. Rather than seeing the
MQB as an example of “post-ethnographic museums”, as for de L’Estoile
(2015), I would be much more inclined to see in this cultural institution a
good terrain for further expanding an “ethno-art-graphic” museum, where
creative ethnographic collections can make both art and anthropology. In an
implicit (or cautious?) way, Benoît de L’Estoile (2015) himself seems to
identify two limitations of his recent proposition, which I think need to be
made explicit here. These “limitations”, I believe, are central for under-
standing the role of the MQB today and its relation to anthropology.
    The first and most important point is the contradiction existent between
the shifts of paradigms within museum institutions (from the Musée de
l’Homme to the MQB – that is, from a museum of “collection” of facts to a
museum of “creation” and interpretations, as mentioned above), and the en-
during paradigm of classic French ethnology. De L’Estoile explains that as a
“post-ethnographic museum” the MQB stands today too much in contrast
with the Lévi-Straussian discursive paradigm on which the French ethnology
is still based. Following Lévi-Strauss, the anthropological paradigm of French
ethnology is certainly based on a clear distinction between the collection of
facts (ethnography), the first level of synthesis of these facts (ethnology) and
the comparative study of human beings (anthropology). Each of these three
levels determines as well the jobs that scholars can find in the field of French
ethnology. As a result, in the recent years, the third level, precisely anthro-
pology, has been increasingly something practiced by (or left with) discip-
lines other than anthropology – namely philosophy and art history. Building
on this analysis, I would say that within this Lévi-Straussian trilogy, art is
perceived as something closer to anthropology but not to ethnography (reas-
on why in France “l’anthropologie de l’art” is also practiced, or re-appropri-
ated, by art historians who do not necessarily conduct ethnographic field-
work).
    Following de L’Estoile we can therefore say that despite the MQB attempt
to re-unite art with ethnography (marked by the shift between the tradition-
al “ethnographic” Musée de l’Homme to the “creative” MQB), over the past
ten years art has continued being something separated from ethnography.
This enduring separation has also been marked by the way in which French

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176                                                                GIULIA BATTAGLIA


ethnology has continued articulating the concept of “ethnography” as for
the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) also based, on the
classic Lévi-Straussian tri-partition, “ethnography”, “ethnology” and “an-
thropology”, influencing various anthropological practices in France, includ-
ing the research department of the MQB. In this respect, it is as if over the
past ten years, our potential museum of “creative” interpretations (or,
“post-ethnographic museum”?) has lacked support from the practice of
French ethnology (and hence from the research department of the museum)
which, following this analysis, has continued seeing “creativity” in “anthro-
pology” but not in “ethnography” and “ethnology”.
   The second level of critical evaluation, advanced by de L’Estoile (2015), is
the fact that, as many other commentators have pointed out, the MQB lacks
postcolonial critique. Much has been said about this lacuna and by and large,
reviewers have analysed it in relation to Jacques Chirac’s national politics
and the politico-philosophical concept of French universalism and integral-
isme vis-à-vis questions about multiculturalism, post-colonialism, globalisa-
tion and the much proclaimed “cultural diversity” (cfr. Lusini 2004; Amato
2006; Di Lorenzo 2006; Clifford 2007; Price 2007; Dias 2008; Clemente 2008;
Digard 2008; Thomas 2008; Shelton 2009). To me though, if at an institu-
tional level it is important to understand this lacuna from the perspective of
national politics (as many scholars have already done), on the other hand it
is also important to link this debate with that of French ethnology men-
tioned above. In the past ten years of the MQB, the postcolonial critique, in
fact, has also been missing in most of the institutionalised discourse of
French ethnology, promoted by the CNRS. In other words, if it is true that at
the level of national politics the MQB has “forgotten” to include postcolonial
debates in its practice, at the level of research practice, by and large based on
the CNRS’ paradigm, the museum has also dismissed this discourse.
   By making explicit and linking together these two points of criticism
raised in the most recent essay written by de L’Estoile’s (2015), we can
therefore say that in the past ten years not only the research department but
also “French ethnology” has remained marginal within the wider structure of
the MQB. Questions of art, ethnography and postcolonial critique are indeed
interconnected. Engaging with the postcolonial critique in museum practices
means engaging with questions of aesthetics as also forms of politics (of rep-
resentations). In other words, it means being able to make “visible” the
“opacity” of representation, as Louis Marin (1989) would say, in both art and
ethnography and going towards what I have called an “ethno-art-graphic”
museum, where ethnography, art and I add now politics, can dialogue to-
gether beyond the classic separation between French ethnology and the rep-

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WHAT ELSE TO SAY ABOUT THE MQB?                                                 177


resentation of arts premiers, as originally conceived by the MQB. On the con-
trary, keeping questions of politics of representation out of the museum, and
ethnography and art as two separated entities, means continue reinforcing
the idea that art can only be a “display of ethnography”, ethnography as only
the “contextualisation of art”, politics as something different from aesthet-
ics, and by and large research departments of anthropology as something to
remain marginal within cultural institutions.
   In conclusion, my experience of an ex-boursier of the MQB has taught me
that until the discourse around art, anthropology and politics of representation
does change in French ethnology, a museum like the MQB is still far to be-
come a “post-ethnographic museum”. The research department will in fact
continue being marginalised within the wider museum’s structure with no
(or limited) impact on institutional choices. Nevertheless, because of the
questions that the museum has provoked over the past ten years, the MQB
will remain a cultural institution with much potential and several contradic-
tions to remind some reluctant scholars the need to reflect on such missing
interconnected triangulation, and some others to better centralise (with a
specific local touch connected to the French ethnology) the role of the MQB
within international debates on anthropology and ethnographic museums
(cfr. Phillips 2011; Lattanzi et al. 2013; Rossi 2015). Yet, is there a way out?
   The increasing growth of temporary exhibitions (vis-à-vis permanent ex-
hibitions) is proving that there is, perhaps, a way to bypass traditional
paradigms in both French ethnology and museum practices, and begin to
take what I have called an “ethno-art-graphic” direction. Less compelled by
institutional rules and with the potential to dialogue with other actors (e.g.
external curators, external artists, external anthropologists, etc.), temporary
exhibitions (which, have become so much en vogue in France) are gradually
overtaking permanent exhibitions and pushing the boundaries of museum
practices and discourses. While for the MQB some may like to interpret them
as a sort of “furniture” for its impressive architecture, aimed to attract even
more a Parisian public (de L’Estoile 2010, 2015), I would also say that tem-
porary exhibitions can be the way to bypass institutional, historical and dis-
cursive constraints. Arguably, going to a museum is becoming almost syn-
onymous with going to a temporary exhibition, and in the French language
going to a temporary exhibition has already become part of the possible cul-
tural activities to be done in a day: “faire un expo”.
   If this is the case, and thus if the direction of museums is increasingly go-
ing towards temporary exhibitions, we can then find in the recently finished
MQB Persona: Étrangement Human (2016), curated by anthropologist (includ-
ing Emmanuel Grimaud and the MQB’s ex-director, Anne-Christine Taylor), a

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178                                                                         GIULIA BATTAGLIA


good example in which art, anthropology and politics dialogue and mix with
one another. Through a combination of historical and contemporary collec-
tions coming from the “western and non-western” worlds associated with
the human experience (from the practice of shamanism, to the creation/rein-
carnation of new/old gods, to domestic uses of familiar objects, to robots,
machines, computers, etc.), the anthropologists-curators pushed the spec-
tator to reflect during the exhibition about the relationship between “hu-
man” and “non-human” and the intimate relationship that humans create
with objects transculturally. The exhibition goes beyond cultural stereotypes
and cultural specificities. It treats art-objects and beliefs coming from differ-
ent parts of the world no longer as distant practices/objects made/done by a
distant “other”. The spectator is placed in a condition to think of a form of
“proximity” between his/her experience and the tradition of a specific prac-
tice connected to an apparently “distant object”. Thanks to this proximity
the spectator is then invited to also think at the multiple and complex lives
that objects/practices do have in the global human experience – making that
apparently distant object/practice no longer distant.
   Similarly, and even more explicitly, the recently finished exhibition MOF
(2017-18)2, curated by an anthropologist ex-boursier of the MQB, Arnaud
Dubois, and held at the Musée d’Arts et Metiers, is another useful example to
start going towards an “ethno-art-graphic” direction 3. In this case, it is the
whole process of creation that gets materialised. Through a combination of
the display of historical objects of the museums that have never been shown
from the nineteen century, and a fieldwork experience with contemporary
French “best” artisans across the country, the anthropologist-curator creates
“zones of frictions”, as he himself explains (Dubois 2018), between the re-
search, the selected objects, the techniques of creation, the artisans” corpor-
eal knowledge and the real human-bodies in movement and in action. The
“mise-en-place” of the overall exhibition becomes the architectural space
where to highlight all these elements through different sensorial but inter-
connected moments – e.g. through an entire room for stand-alone photo-
graphy, or another room for stand-alone sound, one for stand-alone objects,
a side-space for stand-alone audio-interviews, another room for stand-alone
video-art, and a fictional live-stand for stand-alone live-performances (made


2. The MOF are the best artisans of France (Les Meilleurs Ouvriers de France) which artisans
can get as a title from a national competition lanced every three years in France.
3. Although belonging to a different history, I consider the Musée d’Arts et Métiers as simi-
lar to classic ethnographic museums because traditionally also based on collections of “ob-
jects as facts”.


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by invited MOF every afternoon of the weekends). In other words, each art
practice (made in collaboration with experts from each field of art) and each
piece of ethnographic experience (done by the anthropologist himself) get its
own unique moment to connect to the public in the overall exhibition. In this
way, the “opacity” of the “process” of creation (Marin 1989) becomes visible.
Precisely as for the “object of art” always made by “operational cycles” of
“sequences of actions”, as the anthropologist-curators tries to tell us in his
MOF, the overall exhibition functions as the “container”, the “form” (or
even as the object of art itself) for all the other “processes of creation” that
constitute it.
   To conclude, allow me to pose a final interrogation: would these examples
mean that in order to understand the MQB’s (or other similar museums) im-
plication in art, politics and anthropology we must today overtake perman-
ent exhibitions and only focus on temporary exhibitions? I would let the
years to come to answer such question.




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180                                                                      GIULIA BATTAGLIA




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                                        2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 169-182
                                          2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 169-182




 Giulia BATTAGLIA is a researcher in anthropology of visual/art/media practices spe-
 cialised in documentary film in India. After receiving a PhD from the School of
 Oriental and African Studies, University of London, she has worked as a lecturer
 and researcher in various departments of anthropology, media, arts and social sci-
 ence as well as in cultural institutions in England and in France. At present, she
 lives and works in Paris in the field of anthropology, arts and media, being part of
 the laboratoire de recherche IRMECCEN, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3)
 and the laboratoire de recherche LAIOS/IIAC, at the École des Hautes Études en
 Sciences Sociales, Paris. For the latter, she is also responsible for a funded interna-
 tional project between art and social science, called “L’invention des formes de re-
 présentation à l’ère de la mondialisation”.
 giulia.battaglia@ehess.fr




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giulia Battaglia
What else to say about the MQB? Re-centring anthropology in art and French museum practices:
A vision from an ex-boursier
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 169-182.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3398
