The Musée du quai Branly in Paris, the ethnographic museum located in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, could soon have a different name. The museum’s director, Stéphane Martin, has submitted a request to the French culture and higher education ministries asking that the institution be called Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac after the former president who founded the museum.
“The new name could be in use by 20 June for the opening of the exhibition Jacques Chirac and the Dialogue between Cultures (21 June-9 October),” a museum spokesman says. The show will focus on Chirac's grand plan for the museum—his presidential “grand projet”—and his taste for pre-Columbian art.
Chirac, who was president of France from 1995 to 2007, announced in 1996 the creation of a state-funded museum to house art brought to France by its colonial explorers. The Musée du quai Branly, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, opened in June 2006. “The museum would not have existed without Jacques Chirac’s drive and willpower,” Martin says.
Named after its location by the Seine, the project was the first major Parisian museum since the opening of the Musée d’Orsay in 1986. There was debate during the inauguration about the title of the new institution, with Musée Chirac among the possible options.
