via South China Morning Post, 22 March 2024: Yannick Lintz, leading Paris’ Musée Guimet, emphasizes provenance in the restitution debate, advocating for open dialogue rather than mere repatriation. The museum, renowned for its diverse Asian art collection, underscores the importance of East-West collaboration in preserving cultural heritage. With initiatives like the upcoming exhibition featuring Cambodian sculptures and partnerships with Chinese institutions, Musée Guimet exemplifies how museums can serve as diplomatic channels, fostering mutual respect and understanding between cultures.
When you enter the Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts, in Paris, France – the largest museum of Asian art in Europe – what you see first is not its vast array of porcelain objects from China or Buddhist artworks from India.
Instead, in a departure from many other Asian art museums, Musée Guimet opens with a Khmer courtyard of sculptures, straight from Angkor.
“It’s funny because when we think of Asia in Europe, for us in this part of the world, there are two main cultures: the Chinese one and the Indian one,” says Yannick Lintz, president of the Guimet. “So it’s an original entrance for this Asian art museum.
“You don’t enter immediately into India or China: first, you are in Cambodia.”
This entrance is partly a result of Cambodia being a protectorate of France from 1863 to 1953, but also a reflection of how the Guimet houses works from not just the largest Asian nations, but across the continent, from Afghanistan all the way to Japan. “When you are in China, you have Chinese art museums, when you are in India, you have Indian art museums,” says Lintz. “When you go to Southeast Asia you have, of course, always the national art museum. The idea of Asian art, more largely, is a European or a Western vision.”
