The Guimet Museum (Musée National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet) is the main Oriental museum in France and one of the world's most famous centers for the storage and study of oriental art, its collections are considered the largest in the West. It was founded by the Lyon industrialist Emile Guimet (1836-1918), whose original dream was to create a museum dedicated primarily to the Egyptian religion, as well as classical European antiquity and Asian countries. To this end, he undertook a number of expeditions to Egypt and Greece, and in 1876 made a trip around the world, during which he visited, in particular, Japan, China and India.

The impressive collection collected by E. Guimet was exhibited in Lyon in 1879. Almost immediately, construction began on a special building for the museum in the respectable XVI arrondissement of Paris, which opened in 1889.

Already during the lifetime of its founder, the museum began to specialize mainly in Asian art. A significant role in this was played by the successful expeditions that France sent during this period to the hitherto almost unknown countries of the East. Soon, E. Guimae decides to reduce the exposition devoted to the religions of the East in order to display items brought by the head of the ethnographic mission in Korea, Sh. Vara (1842/1843-1893), and in 1912 the Egyptian exhibits are sent to the storerooms altogether to make way for the collection of Tibetan art collected by the orientalist and traveler Zh. Bako (1877-1965).

In 1927, the Guimet Museum was subordinated to the Direction des musées de France and took over some of the objects acquired by Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) and Edouard Chavannes (1865-1918) during the famous expeditions to Central Asia and China. In the same year, the museum received exhibits from the Indochina Trocadero Museum (Musée Indochinois du Trocadero), founded in 1882 on the basis of the collection of Khmer art collected by the discoverer of Angkor L. Delaporte (1842-1925) during expeditions to Siam and Cambodia.

In the 1930s, the museum was expanded with Afghan art objects found during archaeological excavations conducted by the French archaeological expedition in Afghanistan, which was led by the then chief curator of the museum, Jean-Claude Monsieur. Aken (1886-1941). In 1945, the Guimet Museum transferred its Egyptian collections to the Louvre, in return receiving the collection of the Department of Asian Art (Département des arts asiatiques du Louvre), created at the end of the XIX century.

Zh. Aken, a prominent Resistance figure who died in 1941, was succeeded as chief curator by the orientalist R. Grusset (1885-1953); in 1954-1965, the museum was headed by a major expert on the art of Ancient Cambodia, F. P. Grosse. Stern (1895-1979), who did a lot for the development of scientific work in the museum, in particular for the replenishment of the library fund and photo archive. In 1965, he was replaced by Zh. Obuai (1912-1990), which significantly increased the collections devoted to classical India and renovated the interiors of the museum. In 1982-1986, the museum was headed by a well-known sinologist, V. V. Yeliseyev (1918-2002), who was succeeded by Zh. Jarrige (b. 1940), a specialist in Indo-Pakistani archaeology, who was responsible for extensive renovation of the building and re - equipment of the exposition; in August 2008, he gave way to the chief curator J. Giet, known for his works on art objects brought by the P. Pelliot expedition (1908-1910).

The Guimet Museum is particularly closely connected with this expedition. During its preparation, the museum, which did not yet have today's fame, turned out to be somewhat aloof. The statues and murals brought by Pelliot were deposited in the Louvre, and the manuscripts were placed in the National Library. However, soon E. Guimet seeks the right to hold an exhibition of selected masterpieces.

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In 1945, along with other objects from the collection of the Louvre's Department of Asian Art, the museum also received collections brought by the Pelliot expedition. The expedition's documents and most of Pellio's personal archive were also transferred to the museum's library. The Pelliot Foundation became the subject of close study, led by Professor N. Vandier-Nicolas of the National School of Living Oriental Languages (1908 - 1987), and a student of Pelliot, a prominent Mongol scholar L. Ambis (1904 - 1978). Through the efforts of the latter, 16 volumes of documents from the Pelliot expedition were published between 1961 and 1976. However, in the museum's exposition, the items brought by the Pellio expedition, as well as in general the exhibits related to the Buddhist period of the history of the oases of Central Asia, were presented rather modestly.

But soon, at the insistence of V. Eliseev, preparations began for the publication of art objects brought by the Pellio expedition and stored in the museum's storerooms. The result of this work was prepared by the curator of the museum Zh. Gie is a two-volume compilation of "Central Asian Art: the Paul Pelliot collection at the National Museum of Asian Art-Guime" [Arts de VAsie centrale..., 1995 - 1996], published in Japanese by Kodansha International in 1994, and in French by the Union of National Museums in 1995-19961. J. Giet, with the assistance of L. Fejer, also carried out a new classification of exhibits and storage units related to the Pelliot expedition, and many of them were first extracted from the boxes in which they were brought from the Louvre in 1945. At the same time, it was possible to find a number of valuable items that were considered lost. At the same time, large-scale restoration of the collection was carried out. In October 1995, the exhibition " Serindia, Buddha's Land. Ten Centuries of Art on the Silk Road " 3, prepared by the Guimet Museum and the National Library. For the first time, the treasures brought by Pellio were presented to the public in such numbers. As a result, the Central Asian exposition was significantly expanded in 1996 - 2002, and masterpieces from the Pellio collection occupied a worthy place in it. During the same period, with the support of the A. Mellon Foundation, 4 all the storage units included in the Pelliot Foundation were digitized, and in 2008 the museum published travel notes of the P. Pelliot expedition [Pelliot R., 2008].

Among the main achievements of the museum in recent years is the opening of the so-called Buddhist Pantheon (Pantheon bouddhique), which displayed mainly Buddhist sculptures brought by E. Guimet from Japan in 1876. The pantheon, to which the famous Japanese artist B. Frank (1927-1996) made a great contribution, opened in 1991.

In 1993-1996, major works were undertaken on the reconstruction of the museum (in particular, the architects completely preserved the historical appearance of the building and significantly increased its volume by building an underground floor), it was possible not only to expand the exhibition space (now it is about 5500 square meters), but also to get the opportunity to conduct a large amount of scientific and educational work in the museum thanks to the spacious and well-equipped library, archive and conference hall with 280 seats (there is even an Oriental restaurant). Now the Guimet Museum regularly organizes various exhibitions and offers visitors courses of lectures, thematic series of films, performances and master classes dedicated to ancient art and the living traditions of the countries and peoples of the East, which goes beyond the traditional museum activities and expands the museum's audience, which is approximately 300 thousand people a year.

The Guimet Museum Library, founded in 1889, which contains more than one hundred thousand volumes of books in Eastern and Western languages, about one and a half thousand titles of periodicals and a significant number of manuscript materials and personal archives of many French scientists, is one of the largest specialized collections and is a "must-visit" not only for French Orientalists. Especially noteworthy is the large collection of illustrated Japanese books from the Edo period, Tibetan woodcuts (more than 2 thousand, including the library of the French writer and traveler A. David-Neel (1868-1969), the first European woman to reach Lhasa in 1924), Chinese geographical maps of the Qing era from the collection of A. Vissier (1858-1930), Urdu texts from the Garcin de Tassi collection, fragments of Uyghur manuscripts, and archives of world-renowned scholars such as the indologist

1 Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux.

2 Grand Palais, a large exhibition complex built in 1897 near the Champs-Elysees for the World's Fair.

3 Sérinde, Terre de Bouddha. Dix siècles d'art sur la Route de la Soie.

4 Andrew Mellon Foundation.

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O. Barth (1834-1916), the Sinologists E. Chavannes and P. Pelliot, the Iranist R. Hirschmann (1895-1979), and others. Thanks largely to the library, the Guimet Museum is one of the leading centers of Oriental studies in France, and participates in many joint projects.

The web page 5, created with the support of Crédit Agricole Bank, fully corresponds to the attention to openness, technical equipment and convenience of visitors that the Guimet Museum demonstrates. The site provides a wealth of information about all aspects of the museum's activities, is characterized by easy navigation and a richness of illustrative materials that is rare even on the modern Web. In this regard, it can be considered as a kind of example of organizing a museum site, and not necessarily specifically Oriental.

Страница существует в четырех языковых версиях - французской, английской, китайской и японской. Сведения, содержащиеся на сайте, поделены на несколько тематических групп.

"Practical information". In this section, you can find information about the opening hours of the museum, photo archive, bookstore and library, view a full selection of press materials related to the museum over the past six years, and subscribe to the newsletter, which is sent free of charge by email once a month. The letter informs about the program of exhibitions and events planned for the near future, as well as what exhibits were purchased by the museum.

"About the museum". Here you will find detailed information about the history of the museum, the library, the Buddhist Pantheon, and the d'Musée d'Ennery, now closed for renovation. The museum is a private collection of objects of oriental art of the XVII-XIX centuries, collected by Clemence d'Annery. In 1908, the collection and the mansion built for its storage were transferred by the owner to the Guimet Museum. This section also contains the main news about the archaeological excavations conducted by French specialists in Mongolia since 1993. The main objects of their research are the burial sites of the Xiongnu era (III century BC-II century AD) in the Gol Mod necropolis. Since 2000, the expedition has been working under the dual responsibility of the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS) and the Guimet Museum. In this section, you can also find information about expeditions that are carried out within the framework of the Unité mixte de recherche - the "Center for Archaeological Research of the Indus Valley, Balochistan, Central and East Asia" of the National Center for Scientific Research and the Guimet Museum. Under the auspices of the center, archaeological surveys are conducted in Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

"Collections". In this section, you can get acquainted with the history of the formation and the main masterpieces of the museum's collections, which are divided into regions: Japan, Korea, China, Central Asia, Himalayan art, India, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Exhibitions". It contains information and rich photographic material about the exhibitions held in the museum, both about those that are currently going on, and about those that have already passed and are planned.

The Cultural Events section includes extensive information about thematic excursions, conferences, and master classes. Of particular interest are events dedicated to the "living tradition", during which you can not only learn from the masters of traditional dance or take part in a tea ceremony, but also, for example, master the secrets of ink drawing or making puppets for the Cambodian shadow theater. At the same time, many such events are specially designed for children and are timed to coincide with school holidays. A separate section is dedicated to disabled visitors. A special subsection is intended for teachers. It explains how the various activities organized by the museum can be used to raise and educate children of different ages.

The "Audience" section contains information about film screenings held in the museum (mainly documentaries about the life and traditional culture of Eastern countries are shown), lectures by well-known Oriental scholars, and performances with specially invited musicians, singers and dancers from different countries.

"Discoveries". This section contains information about the museum's new acquisitions and provides detailed descriptions of a particular collection item. One of the subsections is dedicated to children - here they can collect images of the most famous exhibits from scattered "pieces" and thus begin their acquaintance with the museum.

5 http://www.guimet.fr

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An interesting section is "Digital resources", where, among other things, you can get acquainted with the database of the famous collection of E. Grandidier (1833-1912)6. This collection is one of the world's richest collections of Chinese porcelain, consisting of more than 6 thousand items. The collection's database, which lasted more than ten years, covers more than two thousand of the most interesting exhibits, each of which is photographed from different angles (in total, the database includes about 15 thousand photos) and annotated in detail. The search in the catalog database is very convenient, as it can be performed according to many criteria. The database is provided with a glossary, a brief excursion into the history of porcelain in China, the development of its styles, etc. In the same category there is a link to a "Virtual Tour", where you can use panoramic zoomable photos to view all five floors of the museum in detail, listen to expert comments on the most interesting items. A link to the virtual tour is also available on the main page of the site. The museum management's desire to "keep up with the times" is expressed in the fact that the Guimet Museum is represented on the social Internet network Twitter, a link to which can also be found in the section under consideration.

"Publications". Here you can find information about the museum's publications: research, exhibition catalogues, books for children, etc. All these books can be purchased in the museum's bookstore.

The Charity and Sponsorship section provides information on how to help the museum. I must say that the Societé des Amis du Musée Guimet is an extensive organization that provides great support to the museum. It is thanks to the funds raised by this society that collections are mainly replenished and various events are organized, sometimes quite expensive.

The "Professional Section" includes information about vacancies, as well as about the rules of film and video shooting in the museum and holding private events on its territory.

The calendar displayed on the main page allows you to navigate through the schedule of events, and finally, you can send an e-card with an image of one of the masterpieces of the museum's collection.

Such a detailed analysis of the content of the Guimet Museum's website was undertaken both to familiarize the reader with all the variety of scientific and educational activities that the museum conducts, and to clearly demonstrate the principles of organizing museum work, which includes both large-scale scientific projects and events aimed primarily at expanding the museum's audience, including by: attracting children and teenagers. Apparently, it is largely the successful implementation of these principles that allows the Guimet Museum to deservedly occupy the place of one of the most famous and visited Oriental museums in Europe, as well as being one of the flagships of world orientalism.

list of literature

Arts de I 'Asie centrale: la collection Paul Pelliot du musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet I Sous la direction de Jacques Giès. T. I-II. Paris, 1995 - 1996.

Pelliot, P. Carnets de route 1906 - 1908. I. Textes. P., 2008.

6 http://www.guimet-grandidier.fr

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