Although the meteoric rise of Helena Rubinstein, the leading business woman of the 20th century, whom Cocteau called “The Empress of Beauty”, is familiar to all, her career as an intuitive collector and her pioneering role in the recognition of the arts of Africa and Oceania is probably less well known. Through sixty-five works from her collection, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac pays tribute to her, and reveals Madame’s fascination for non-European arts.

Madame’s collection, built up mainly in Paris over the course of her encounters, and continually enriched thanks to her keen eye, comprises over 400 pieces of non-European art. In her apartments in Paris, New-York and London, this extraordinary collection sat alongside works by Modernist painters and sculptors such as Chagall, Braque, Brancusi, Modigliani, Picasso and Miró.

Her collection achieved mythical status through her participation in major exhibitions, such as African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art in 1935, and was dispersed in 1966 in New York in a series of remarkable sales, which marked a key stage in the recognition of African arts. Today her name still associated with the period of the first enthusiasts of “distant” arts, few of whom were women.

Helena Rubinstein was a pioneer. At that time, the market for non-European arts was just beginning to develop. By assiduously frequenting intellectual circles, art galleries and auctions, she had access to a wide range of diverse objects. Introduced to this field by the sculptor Jacob Epstein, Madame collected the most unexpected pieces, particularly from Nigeria, Cameroon, the Popular Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She liked the expressiveness and the power of these sculptures, which matched her avant-garde tastes. Her focus on the figurative aspects of utilitarian objects (heddle pulleys, doors, seats, musical instruments), and on the sculptural treatment of the face by African artists fits with a constant personal search for beauty and its many possible definitions.

A major research programme preceded this exhibition. Hélène Joubert, head of the museum’s African Heritage Collections and exhibition curator, conducted research over two years in national and international institutions as well as in major private collections and archives. A large iconography has been put together to illustrate the history of this collection.

Guided by sales catalogues from 1966, various publications and references, and by a collection of testimonies and an analysis of photographs of Helena Rubinstein’s apartments, the curator highlights the construction of a collection, its history and its distinctive characteristics. Madame’s unusual sensibility is also revealed here, an aspect that has been little explored until now.

Helena Rubinstein’s collection shows that her artistic choices were bold in the eyes of her contemporaries. Her visionary approach and her curiosity drew her towards rare and powerful works that have come of age over time. A selection of sixty-five objects from Africa and Oceania, from Insulindia and the Americas to a lesser extent, evokes the choices of this major figure among the collectors in the first half of the 20th century.

This exhibition is on view at the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (Paris – France) until June 28, 2020.

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Designed by the Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects, the construction of the museum first began in 2006 but slowed down due to the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution in 2011. The museum was first announced in 1992 and initially scheduled to open in 2012.

In June 2018, the authorities announced that the museum would partially open its doors in 2019 for the unveiling of its star attraction—all 5,400 objects from the tomb of King Tutankhamun. The full opening was expected to follow in 2022, for the centenary of Howard Carter’s discovery of the boy Kings’s tomb. But finally, the Egyptian government’s new ambition is that the entire 490,000 m² complex will be inaugurated in 2020.

Although it bears the double signature of the renowned builders BESIX and ORASCOM, the construction of this museum remains a complex and challenging project.

Nested between the ancient Great Pyramids and the modern city of Cairo, at the junction between dry desert and the fertile floodplain, the Grand Museum is a portal to the past. The Giza plateau Memphis and its Necropolis nominated by UNESCO among the world Cultural Heritage Sites, contains irreplaceable monuments from across time.The museum complex will be built on a plot of land approximately 117 feddans, about 480,000 square meters.

After several years of monument examinations, restoration and transportation, the GEM is expected to house around 100,000 artifacts from various periods of Egypt’s rich long history. Khaled Al-Anani said that the GEM is one of the ministry’s largest projects, approximately 20,000 artifacts would be exclusively displayed for the first time.

By presenting unseen artifacts, the museum next to the pyramids of Giza intends to impress with pieces by King Tutankhamun that since their discovery in 1922, have never been exposed to the public. The GEM’s General Manager Tarek Tawfik said in a previous interview with The Art Newspaper that the GEM accommodates two 7,000 sqm galleries revealing the king’s lifestyle; how he lived, dressed and ate in addition to the complete collection of his precious belongings.

As part of Egypt’s efforts to return stolen and smuggled pieces, many of them will be showcased at the GEM. The Grand Egyptian Museum will allow Egypt to become a major worldwide hub for pharaonic history and a must-visit place for egyptologists.

The museum aims at taking grasp of the diversity of Egypt’s heritage of monuments and arts needed to be shown in one place in one location to maintain and preserve this huge legacy. he museum complex aims to furnish all its visitors with a uniquely enjoyable, educational, and cultural experience.

With its unique position on the cusp between the past and the present, the Grand Egyptian Museum will lie at the repository for ancient artifacts that creates an interactive experience for the visitor; it will build a bridge between the past and the future. The GEM is expected to be one of the largest museums in the entire world presenting a heritage devoted for a single civilization.

While waiting for the long-awaited opening of the GEM, we invite you to take advantage of the latest world tour of the exhibition “Tutankhamun, the Treasures of the Pharaoh”, visible from March 23 to September 15, 2019 at the Grande Halle de La Villette – Paris (France). More details on this exhibition here.

*For more information please visit the following links  :
→ “Tutankhamun, the Treasures of the Pharaoh”
→ Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM)
→ Ministry of Antiquities of Egypt

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” When my eyes got used to the light, the details of the room slowly emerged from the darkness, strange animals, statues and gold, everywhere the glitter of gold.”

Howard Carter

On November 4, 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter made an extraordinary discovery in the Valley of the Kings: the tomb of Tutankhamun, Pharaoh of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, in the 14th century BC. The Tutankhamun, Pharaoh’s Treasure exhibition celebrates the centenary of this legendary discovery by bringing together exceptional masterpieces in a world tour that reminds us for sure the historic exhibition ‘Toutânkhamon et son temps’ (‘Tutankhamun and his times’) from 1967.

« Tutankhamun and his times » a historic exhibition

A few days before Christmas 1966, a French military aircraft landed on the runway of Bourget airport, carrying part of the funerary treasure of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, escorted by the French Egyptologist Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, who was at the time a curator in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities in the Musée du Louvre; the heavy objects were transported on a ship. The Egyptian Arab Republic loaned France thirty-two artefacts from the king’s impressive burial furniture, complemented by thirteen objects from the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, all intended for an exhibition held at the Petit Palais entitled “Toutânkhamon et son temps” (‘Tutankhamun and his times’).

Inaugurated on 16 February 1967, in the presence of André Malraux, then Minister of Culture at this time, and his Egyptian counterpart Saroïte Okacha, the exhibition fulfilled the longstanding ambition of its curator: Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt wished to give the French public an opportunity to view the fascinating objects discovered in November 1922 by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in the pharaoh’s unplundered tomb. Apart from the undeniable aesthetic aspects of the works and objects exhibited, which attested to the finesse and beauty of Egyptian art at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, its main objective was to highlight the splendour of the objects and enable the general public to gain an insight into their true functions. In their desire to contextualise the displayed objects, the exhibition organisers even added floral decorations next to the display cases that resembled the large bouquets offered to the dead in antiquity. Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt curated the nine exhibition rooms around the life and death of King Tutankhamun, with a particular focus on the burial rites. At the end of the exhibition’s itinerary, in a carnelian-carpeted room, visitors discovered the king’s famous gold mask, which had been brought under guard to the exhibition site on the eve of the inauguration on board an Air France tourist plane.

From the outset after its inauguration, the exhibition “Tutankhamun and his time” was highly popular, and the contemporary press spoke of the “wonder” and “contemplation” of the general public as they beheld the exhibited works. Such was the popularity of the exhibition that some days up to 12,000 people visited the Petit Palais and the exhibition notices had to be remade in large-format versions and placed above each case so that everyone could see them. The decision was taken to extend the duration of the exhibition, which was initially scheduled to end on 15 June 1967, to 4 September. “Tutankhamun and his times” was viewed by 1,241,000 visitors, with queues extending each day onto Avenue Winston Churchill and the Champs Élysées; for the cartoonist Sempé, working for L’Express, it was a veritable phenomenon of “contemporary life”.

One of the first blockbuster exhibitions, “Tutankhamun and his times” also symbolised the good relations that existed between France and Egypt, after the Suez Canal crisis, and it helped fund the campaign to save the monuments of Nubia—threatened by the construction of the dam at Aswan—, which was largely coordinated by Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt and Saroïte Okacha. The profits from the entry tickets and requests to take photos were allocated to the protection and saving of monuments threatened with disappearance under Lake Nasser.

The ultimate world tour

For this final tour, the exhibition Tutankhamun, the Pharaoh’s Treasure, is hosted in the largest international capitals. This world “tour” will pass through 10 metropolises and has started in Los Angeles (LA Science Center), where it was visible from 24 March 2018 to 6 January 2019. Presented by the Ministry of Egyptian Antiquities, the exhibition is currently on display at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris until 15 September 2019.

This totally immersive exhibition unveils more than 150 masterpieces, 50 of which will travel for the first and last time outside Egypt. For its Parisian stopover, the statue of the god Amon protecting Tutankhamun, from the Louvre Museum’s collections, is part of the scenography. Unfortunately, the Tutankhamun funeral mask, the main piece of the 1967 show, will not be exhibited during the event because an Egyptian law prohibits its removal. Nevertheless, the exhibition remains a unique opportunity to admire a World Heritage collection, a testimony to a fascinating civilization.

At the end of their itinerancy, the objects presented during the exhibition will join the permanent collection of the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) under construction in Cairo, alongside the collection dedicated to Tutankhamun and the history of ancient Egypt. The benefits of this world tour will therefore make it possible to financially support the construction and development of the Grand Egyptian Museum, as well as the archaeological sites in Egypt.

To learn more about the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) follow the link below :

 → The Grand Egyptian Museum is expected to open in 2020

 → Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris

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