Musée du Quai Branly

I visited this museum for the first time about a week ago. It was built 4 years ago and contains objects coming from around the world, mostly primary art pieces. I had never seen anything like this. A few people warned me, saying it was mostly statues with big genital parts and the whole thing a little hard to understand. Yet I really was intrigued by this building. It looks really cool. Plus the pictures advertising the exhibitions were really nice.
So there I go, on a hot saturday. I took an audio guide hoping to learn a little bit about the stuff, and went to see the permanent collection.
I am so happy I did. It was really cool, and not at all what I expected. I forgot half of the things I saw and heard, and did not see everything as the museum got more and more crowded and I felt I had to go. I could take pictures, but without the flash, and some of the items are within glass boxes. In addition, the light in there was really dim so not all the pictures look good. Here are a few.

The first section I looked at was items from Oceania, mostly Melanesia which encompass Papua, New Caledonia if I remember well.

Some of these masks were worn in the "men's house" were ceremonies were held.


This costume represents dead people. The family of the dead are not allowed to see the ones makeing them. They go in the forest and arrange them with branches and stuff they find there.
Then they wear them for the ceremony for the dead. It's quite heavy, so several men take turns to wear them during the whole day. The family can speak one last time with the dead. Then at the end of the day, they are discarded.

Another cool mask:

These are drums carved in wood.



These are also representing the dead, and commonly done with the real person's head. Hmm. The rings you see around the arms are teeth from wild pigs. They are a sign of wealth. So the people are buried with them.

That would be nice for Halloween...
Most of the materials used are would, plant stems, sometimes leather, but also hair, turtle skin or cachalot teeth (not sure of the name: it's some sort of whale).
There were also a little statue from the Easter Island. I couldn't take a good picture of it... This is definitely a place I would love to go to.

So I spent quite some time in the Oceania section. That's when the first herd of kids came in running. I flew to Africa, but didn't have much quiet time there. So I just had a quick look on the collection and will have to go again. I still took a few pictures.