Three months after being appointed head of the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, the specialist in Asian art and Islamic art presents her projects to revitalize the establishment.
words collected by Guillaume Fraissard and Sylvie Kerviel
Doctor of history and heritage curator, Yannick Lintz, 59, took the 1 er November 2022 Sophie Makariou at the head of the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, in Paris , after having directed the department of arts of Islam at the Louvre museum. To meet the challenges that arise at the establishment, she plans to establish partnerships with Asian countries and to solicit rich patrons.
You were named at the head of the Guimet Museum in November 2022. How do you understand your new functions?
Here, my role is not to make learned publications, but to develop and make this museum shine, the largest of Asian arts in Europe, up to its collections and the challenges of our time. My luck is to have worked for a long time on the East which was first the Arab Orient, then the Persian Orient, and Central Asia – I am not completely in the unknown! p>
Cultural establishments are weakened by the current context. The Guimet museum recorded 172,000 visitors in 2022, it is not enough. Twenty years ago, he welcomed more than 400,000. It is a gauge that could be the normal gauge.
What do you envisage to get there?
This is the priority of my mission. I hope to be able to start to have an upward trend in a year. There are different levers to activate. First, that of cultural programming. We must enhance this formidable tool that is the auditorium, currently underused. It is through living culture that we will also manage to attract a wider audience. It seems important to me to build a real programming with regular meetings that make it possible to retain an audience. Addressing youth is for me a priority.
Asian culture, Korean in particular, is very interest among young people. Is it a lever for you?
Yes, Korea but also Japan exercise a fascination on part of young French people. We know Korean soap operas, manga and the tremendous creativity of Asian cinema, literature. All this living culture, we must bring it to the museum and see how to create a dialogue with the collections.
All museums of civilization are concerned with expanding their audience by introducing living art …
I am convinced that we need a deep renewal of the offers of a museum. You should no longer be content to put the works and say: Look how they dialogue between them. The contemporary dimension must be able to reinvent themselves other than by inviting artists to intervene in theaters.
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