The Artification of Culture: The Art Economy and the Consumption of Culture in the Musée du quai Branly

Abstract

The paper results from the investigation of the museum chain that consecrates the “arts prémiers” in the Musée du quai Branly. As a museum of art, conceived to neutralize the cultural value of objects in their previous contexts before entering the European market, the quai Branly is most exclusively connected to the art market and to collectors in the constitution of their own collection. Such a cultural neutrality, mediated by a process of historical silencing, is produced in a museology of artification in which objects are elevated to the statute of “works of art” in the process that evolves from the museum to the market and vice-versa. In the “arts prémiers”, the “work” is a product of a cultural translation by which the elements of other cultures are interpreted as art in order to circulate as commodities in the international context.