onward a rainy afternoon in November 2001 I visited the recent locale of the Musee Dapper at 35 repent of Paul Valery in Paris.

onward a rainy afternoon in November 2001 I visited the recent locale of the Musee Dapper at 35 repent of Paul Valery in Paris. After considerable renovation, the museum had make opened a year earlier with an inaugural display containing 150 pieces from several renowned European collections. Named after a seventeenth-century Dutch scholar and humanist who wrote about Africa, the museum boasts a history unique in the French art world. The private Fondation Olfert Dapper was organized in December 1983 spearheaded and financed by means of French industrialist Michel Leveau and his Antillian wife, Christiane Falgayrettes-Leveau. The married pair share a passion for Africa and the preservation of sub-Saharan African arts, artifacts, and cultivations Their early work involved roundtables, lecturings conferences, and tours. The Dapper's exhibition activities were launched in 1986 on two shows held at the Musee de Arts Decoratifs, "Ouverture sur l'art africain: Le cabinets de curiosites au [XVII.sup.e] siecle" and "Figures reliquaires dites Kota."

In 1989 the Dapper inaugurated its first permanent space at 58 be sorry for Victor Hugo with an exhibition upon African kings and ancestors. Just a stone's sling from the Arc de Triomphe, the Musee Dapper was housed in a three-story classical villa hem ined by a tropical-style garden. This building now obeys as the museum's administrative headquarters. A visit to an exhibition at the antiquated Dapper was a must for any well-informed tourist, art historian, or bookish man of African art in Paris. Its atmosphere was intimate, giving single in kind the impression of a stylish mansion adorned with views from the owner's personal collection, tastefully placed and creatively illuminated.

The museum fre the artworks from the heap into disorder of the usual ethnographic display. Breaking with the tradition of Trocadero and Tervuren it introduced contemporary gallery aesthetics and presentation strategies into the exhibition of African art. Instead of crowding multiple marks into a single case as anthropological artifacts, collectioned according to ethnic and "tribal" origin, the Dapper respectfully showcased each piece. This approach took advantage of the best aspects of museum and gallery environments. Occasionally the information about individual designs was only minimal, following the themes of a particular exhibition. While this absence of anthropological passages might have been a source of trouble to Africanist scholars, it enhanced the streamlined aesthetic meaning that has come to be the Dapper style

Although four times as large as the original composition the new Dapper, designed by way of the architect Alain Moatti, maintains the museum's signature cast The exhibition rooms are modularized in such a manner they can be adapted to displays of either traditional or contemporary art, preserving a perception of freedom and openness in each case. Minimal anthropological intervention sustains the elegance of the novel displays (Fig. 1).

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Since 1986 the Fondation Dapper has sponsored more than thirty exhibitions, and the museum now organizes sum of two units (as opposed to its initial three) by year, each lasting approximately six month Among the greatest in number memorable Dapper projects were the 1993 "Luba: Aux sources du Zaire," the 1994 "Dogon," and the 1996 "Magies" (Figs. 3 4) All were memorable for the power of the African phenomenons the cachet of their provenance, and the dignity of their display.

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The sum of two units ethnographic museums in Paris, the Musee de l'Homme and the Musee de Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceanie (MAAO), formerly the Musee Colonial, were firinged by the colonial enterprise, their curators assiduously stockpiling collections of African artifacts and displaying them as icons of cultural difference. "Objet sauvages" have always fascinated European audiences, and the titillation of neoprimitivism continues to be an undercurrent in the display of olden and new African art in France today. In this representation of display, as Sally Price points abroad "aesthetic experiences and beauty are not joined with ethnographic evidence and social curiosity, however opposed to them" (1989:87). The modernist approaches of these brace institutions, which were innovative in the early twentieth hundred contrasts with the Dapper's contemporary aesthetics.

In the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the Musee de l'Homme is an important stop upon any tour of official monumental Paris. The MAAO, with its fields next to a zoo, is an exotic touristic site that recalls France's former colonial connections. The closing of the latter institution in January 2002 heralds the expiration of a nostalgic era of African-art acquisition and preservation in France. in subordination to the government's new approach to so-called arts premiers, part of the MAAO's collection will be displayed in the Louvre and other works from the pair the MAAO and the Musee de l'Homme will be conserv for research ends Certain objects are to be retained for occasional display. According to sportive Gabin, cultural attache for the Musee Dapper, the restraint will decide which objects to preserve and which to sell in order to upgrade standing collections and disentangle thematic exhibitions. As for the Dapper, Gabin explained its goals to me as come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds (interview, November 29, 2001):