The musée du quai Branly presents Māori: Their treasures have a soul, featuring Māori culture through 250 pieces from the collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. This exhibition, never shown before outside New Zealand, is a testimony to a strong and living culture. It affirms a people’s will to master their own future by emphasising tino rangatiratanga: Māori selfdetermination and control over things Māori.

The exhibition presents a great range of artwork, including sculpture, adornment, daily and sacred objects, architectural elements, photographs, audiovisual documents, and so on. It highlights the links between taonga (ancestral Māori treasures) and contemporary art, shedding light on important issues and debates for Māori today.

The exhibition presents Māori culture as seen by Māori, free from Western views and biases. The heart of the exhibition features art that addresses the political, spiritual, and aesthetic developments that have shaped Māori culture.

Please check all the informations on the official site http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/programmation/exhibitions/soon/maori.html

This exhibition explores the British “aesthetic movement” that, in the second half of the 19th century, set out to move away from the ugliness and materialism of the time, by proposing a new idealisation of art and beauty. Painters, poets, decorators and designers defined an artistic style freed from the principles of order and Victorian morality, and allowing the expression of sensuality.