The main actors responsible for the introduction of the arts prémiers into museums and the Western market are not, in fact, the same ones that produced them and, frequently, do not speak in the name of their interests. In the present article I investigate the first exhibition of the Musée du Quai Branly, which opened in the year 2000, in a section of the Musée du Louvre, in Paris. In the presentation of the objects in the new context, Jacques Kerchache, the main visionary behind this project, provided no room for dissonant views on the selection of the pieces. Some of the more obvious contradictions of the arts prémiers are visible in the Louvre exhibition. The criteria that dictated the musealization of the exhibited primitive sculptures reveal the inability to isolate, inside this particular aesthetic, the anthropological perspective. This article does not aim to discuss the inspiration of the first creators of these objects at the moment that they conceived their work. Instead, its goal is to question whether the creators’ intentions can be disregarded without consequences for the musealization of these objects in the European context, helping to understand this process from a sociological perspective.
Museum; Anthropology; Arts prémiers; Art market; Musealization
