Director brings change to with Asian artifact

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Olivier de Bernon, who was appointed president of the Musée Guimet in Paris late last year, has announced an ambitious exhibition program for France’s national museum of Asian art.

Olivier de Bernon, who was appointed president of the Musée Guimet in Paris late last year, has announced an ambitious exhibition program for France’s national museum of Asian art, which will run until 2016, according to Britian-based The Art Newspaper.

Scheduled shows include an exhibition of ancient Chinese bronzes on loan from a Swiss private collection, which is due to open spring 2013, according to Le Journal des Arts. Later in 2013, de Bernon, a specialist in ancient Cambodian art, is planning to launch an exhibition on Angkor, the seat of the Khmer Empire from the ninth through 15th centuries.

In 2015, the museum will collaborate with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the government cultural body, on an exhibition exploring the Mughal Empire. Meanwhile, in a significant move, a display of jade pieces on loan from the National Palace Museum in Taipei City is scheduled to open in 2016, The Art Newspaper reported.

Chainging artifacts at the museum

De Bernon also plans to make the museum’s Panthéon Bouddhique (Buddhist Pantheon) annex, located on the nearby Avenue d’Iéna, more accessible to the public. The space currently houses more than 250 ancient Japanese and Chinese representations of Buddha. The new director plans to transform the 500-square-meter gallery, which is noticeably quieter than the main museum building, into a venue for “temporary exhibitions, fun shows; something on manga [Japanese comics], for instance.” At a press conference in June, De Bernon said he is considering moving the Buddha pieces to the main museum.

De Bernon’s predecessor, Jacques Giès, aimed to integrate contemporary art into the museum’s displays, presenting pieces by the Pakistani artist Rashid Rana, among others. The museum declined to comment on whether De Bernon would pursue the same strategy.