The Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac celebrates its twentieth anniversary: ​​five dates and five works to celebrate the dialogue of cultures

Angélique Delorme, deputy general director of the Musée du Quai Branly since March 2023, agreed to look with us in the rearview mirror. Twenty years have passed since the inauguration by Jacques Chirac, on June 20, 2006, of the youngest of the great national museums of Paris, in a building designed by the architect Jean Nouvel, a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, and the famous anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss were present. In his inaugural speech, President Chirac affirmed, as a connoisseur, that non-Western societies are rich “high artistic expressions whose masterpieces have nothing to envy of the most beautiful Western productions“.

More than 25 million people, practically the equivalent of the Australian population, have visited this museum of which he was so proud in twenty years. More than 80% French. At our request, Angélique Delorme chose five dates and five emblematic works from her history and her collections. Useful clarification: there is no link between the dates and the photos she selected, but information which complements each other.

Février 1994 : la date de conception du musée

Jacques Chirac was still mayor of Paris when he asked Jacques Kerchache, a great collector of so-called “primary” arts, to organize an exhibition on the Tainos at the Petit Palais, a museum belonging to the City. These people were exterminated in the 15th century, after the arrival of the conquistadors in the West Indies via the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic today). “It was a political act, analyzes the director. Jacques Chirac had refused two years earlier to participate in the commemorations of the 500 years of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America at the invitation of the King of Spain.” She emphasizes that at the time “the entire conservative community revolted against the organization of an exhibition of Taino sculptures in a Museum of Fine Arts“. On the day of the inauguration, in February 1994, Jacques Kerchache lost his voice. “It was Jacques Chirac himself who presented each work to the journalists. says the director of Quai Branly, revealing its secret garden for the first time.” A passion for non-Western arts. “When he was in high school, he skipped classes to go to the Guimet museum”she smiled. The future president refuses any idea of ​​hierarchy between cultures. “The museum that has borne his name since 2016 was built on this political manifesto: the West does not have a monopoly on taste“, she concludes.

November 2011: “Exhibitions – The invention of the wild”

This exhibition was curated by former footballer Lilian Thuram and historian Pascal Blanchard and not by museum curators. “It was an iconoclastic choicecomments Angélique Delorme, and a corrosive subject. It was about talking about human zoos and the way Westerners looked at other cultures..” The director confides that we still talk to her about it, as the impact was so strong: “It shows that Quai Branly hustles and is not afraid to tackle difficult subjects. It’s not here to be consensual.” She recalls that the museum is also a research center welcoming doctoral students, fellows, and a library. “We are the only Parisian museum that dates from the 21st century”she said proudly. In total, 161 exhibitions have taken place within its walls over twenty years. Along the way of gold broke the attendance record in 2025 with more than 286,000 visitors. The scenography has continued to evolve, notably integrating the latest digital techniques into the sound journey.

November 28, 2017: the Ouagadougou speech

Emmanuel Macron delivers his first speech on African politics in front of 800 young people gathered at the University of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso. The young president wants to mark a break with his predecessors. He says he belongs to “a generation of French people for whom the crimes of European colonization are incontestable and part of our history” and intends to modernize relations between France and African countries. “This structuring date profoundly changed the relationships between a country like ours, its relationship to its collections, and the communities from which these collections come.“, deciphers Angélique Delorme. She considers that “the question of restitution of looted works is intrinsically compatible with the position of the Branly museum because it is also a question of dialogue of cultures, of circulation of works and of equalizing the dignity of our countries with the rest of the world“. She recognizes that “despite everything, this speech initiated a new phase for the museum with in-depth work on the provenance of the works. He found himself at the heart of the process of restitution of works stolen or looted over the centuries.

November 2021: the restitution to Benin of the royal treasures of Abomey

In 2017, Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted to return “without delay“works preserved at the Quai Branly Museum claimed by the Benin authorities. Seized in 1892, in the middle of the colonial war, by the troops of a French general, they came from the former kingdom of Abomey. In total, 26 pieces, including three king statues, three thrones and four carved wooden doors. Before these treasures return to their country of origin, the Parisian museum exhibits them one last time, in October 2021. “It was done with joy, remember Angélique Delorme. We opened the museum to the public free of charge for two weeks et we had a lot of visitors. We were really in the dialogue of cultures.” In February, another item stolen by France in 1916 in Ivory Coast, the Djidji Ayôkwé talking drum, was also returned. The ceremony took place at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in the presence of representatives of the two countries. Restitutions should be facilitated in the future by the promulgation, in May, of a law relaxing the principle of inalienability of French public collections. The Quai Branly preserves 380,000 works, of which 108,000 come from the Americas and 72,000 from Africa.

June 20, 21 and 22, 2026: a big birthday party

Behind its famous green wall, the museum houses two hectares of gardens. They will be set up like a festival site and open to the public, Friday June 20 in the evening, for a series of concerts and DJ sets (see list at the end of the article). “Branly is also a place for shows, screenings and music“, specifies the director. The first evening will be paying but the rest of the weekend free with a program”abundant and family“. “We will have culinary tastings, sports, brass bands, Tahitian dance, flash tours of the museum…”, explains Angélique Delorme. On the roof terrace of the museum, a “cinemarathon” will allow, upon reservation, a series of films on the transition to adulthood (Coming of Age in English), 20 years old requires. “We are above all a museum of relationships, concludes the general director, a standard bearer of diversity which is the greatest human wealth.“

Branly – 20 years – The festival :
Friday June 19: from 6 p.m., evening by reservation at the single price of 34 euros giving access to all concerts, DJ sets, performances… with Oxmo Puccino, Lola Ondi Kwa, Andy 4000, Danyl, Mami Watta & Soa de Muse, Ballacké Sissoko, Acid Arab, Kiddy Smile, Tété, BCUC, L’Entourloop, Antoinette Boum, Captain Cumbia.
Saturday June 20 and Sunday June 21: free and open access subject to availability. Workshops, brass bands, games, flash visits, artistic initiations, Grand ball on Saturday evening. Cinemaathon at night on the roof terrace.

Exposition Africa Fashion On view until July 12.
An exhibition on the Ainus, indigenous people of the Japanese island of Hokkaido is scheduled for 2027.