This week I've had the pleasure to go to the Musee Quai Branly in Paris and visit the temporal exhibition "D’un regard l’Autre" (http://www.quaibranly.fr/). Although it was late and we had to rush through the different rooms containing a very heterogeneous collection of exhibits, and at first I was a bit puzzled by the organisation of the exhibition, I have to admit that once I've had time to reflect on it I've found it very original and informative.
The exhibition shows the evolution of the image of the 'exotic' places seen from european/western eyes along the ages, from the middle ages to the present time. starting with the scary images of salvage men and women, who would only be covered with their own fur (!!) and who would enjoy tearing apart and eat any lost explorer, as depicted in many medieval books, to the present assimilation of african, asian and native american art in contemporanean art, passing by the treasuring of exotic materials and items and later the catalogation and detailed description of animals, plants, buildings, cultures and customs with the birth of the scientiffic method and ethnographic disciplines.
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