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Musée Guimet is a little known museum 10 minutes from the Eiffel Tower. The museum has top Asian art collections, specially Khmer art from Cambodia, once ruled by France. One of the best kept secrets in town. Paris museums.

Musée Guimet apartment and hotel map

Musée Guimet collections

Influenced by Indian culture from the first centuries AD, the countries of South-East Asia have developed artistic traditions steeped in Buddhism and Hinduism, of which the Guimet museum exhibits numerous masterpieces. Khmer art from Cambodia, Cham art from Vietnam, Thai art from Thailand, Javanese art from Indonesia, constitute the strong points of a collection which is among the most complete in the West.

Present in the collection, Indian ivories from the Begram Treasury, stucco figures from the Hadda monasteries, earthen sculptures from Fondukistan and wall paintings from Bamiyan bear witness to creativity in the region of Afghanistan and Gandhara until to the gradual arrival of Islam in the 8th and 9th centuries.

The collection dedicated to the Indian world is made up of sculptures spanning from the 3rd millennium BC to the 18th-19th centuries AD, mobile or miniature paintings, from the 15th to the 19th century, and furniture elements, decorative objects and jewelry from the royal courts of India (16th-19th centuries).

With around 2,000 works, the Himalayan World arts section is essentially made up of paintings, sculptures and ritual objects from two of the great religions of Asia: Hinduism and Buddhism. Modest in its beginnings, today it offers a fascinating panorama of the thematic and aesthetic diversity of an entire cultural domain turned towards transcendence.

The Chinese section of the Guimet Museum has around 20,000 objects covering seven millennia of Chinese art, from the distant Neolithic past to the end of the Qing dynasty (1911), even beyond. Archaic bronzes – including the famous Camondo Elephant – and porcelain make it one of the very first collections in the West.

Coming from French missions, the pieces brought together in the Buddhist China - Central Asia collection illustrate the art of the great Buddhist centers, which are so many stages in the progression of caravans on the eastern route of the Silk Road.

The Korean collection kept at the Guimet Museum is recognized as one of the most important in the world outside of Korea. More than 1,500 works of very diverse nature (paintings, ceramics, statues, ceramics, textiles, etc.) illustrate the history of a rich civilization which never ceases to surprise with its grace, its serenity, and its grandeur over time .

The collections of the Japanese section number around 11,000 works and offer an extremely rich and diverse panorama of Japanese art from its birth until the advent of the Meiji era in 1868, as well as works of modern and contemporary art. .

Musée Guimet history

The National Museum of Asian Arts Guimet owes its name to its creator, Émile Guimet (1836-1918), a very cultured man, artist and musician in his spare time, representative of the philanthropic and paternalistic patrons of the 19th century. Influenced by Saint-Simon and by Christian social thought, he attached great importance to knowledge and transmission of knowledge to society and saw in the great religions of the world movements that have sought to make men happy. His approach as a museum creator therefore differed considerably from that of simple aesthete collectors collecting objects.

During his trip to Egypt in 1865, Émile Guimet was, during his visit to the Boulaq museum, struck in particular by its very didactic organization. He then continued to take an interest in religions and approached anthropological, archaeological and Orientalist circles. In 1873, he took part in the first international congress of orientalists organized in Paris, then discovered with wonder the museum of ethnography in Copenhagen where the presentation brought together the different religions of the world. From there was born the idea of ​​founding an institution bringing together a religious museum, a library and a school. To this end, in 1876 he obtained a mission from the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts to study the religions of Japan. During this trip, extended by a visit to China and India, he collected many Buddhist books and sculptures, including a replica of the carved mandala of the Tōji temple. Upon his return, he launched the project of his museum in his hometown of Lyon. The Universal Exhibition of 1878 offered him the opportunity to give a prefiguration of this through a presentation of the religions of the Far East.

In Lyon, he entrusted the architect Jules Chartron with the task of building a museum with his own funds, located opposite the Tête d'Or park. On a triangular plot, the architect imagined building in a neo-Greek style a set of galleries around a courtyard, articulated by an imposing circular tower serving as a vestibule and library. The initial project included, at the back, a mansion for Émile Guimet. In 1879, the first phase of work was completed when a third of the project was completed; on September 30, Jules Ferry came to inaugurate the museum. In rooms decorated in the Pompeian style, visitors then discover, in the rotunda, works from Roman antiquity and then, in the gallery on the ground floor, ceramics from China and Japan; the museum of religions proper is above with the religions of India, China and Japan on the first floor and the religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome on the second.

However, the Lyon project remained unfinished. Émile Guimet planned to transfer his museum to Paris where he thought it would be better appreciated. He then proposed to give all his collections to the State, provided that the latter built the new museum on the same model as that of Lyon and ensured its operation for at least forty years. Guimet would remain its sole administrator. The bill, hotly debated, was adopted in 1885. Work began on land ceded by the City of Paris between avenue d'Iéna and rue Boissière. The architect Charles Terrier then adapted the plans for the Lyon project and the museum was inaugurated on November 23, 1889. The interior decoration and organization of the collections also followed the Lyon model.