The museum and cooperation in Asia

The museum’s founder directed and ensured the edition of several publications: the Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, the Annales du Musée Guimet, the Bibliothèque d’études, the Bibliothèque de vulgarisation and the Bibliothèque d’art, during the first thirty years of their development, published over one hundred and ten research volumes on a great variety of subjects. 

It was up to Joseph Hackin, who succeeded Émile Guimet in 1923, to ensure that henceforth the museum would also play an active role in field work in Asia. In 1922 the king Amanullah of Afghanistan requested France’s assistance to create the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA). The archaeological works carried out in the context of this intergovernmental agreement led to a wealth of fecund discoveries, shared between France and Afghanistan, which up to the 1950s enriched the Musée Guimet collections and those of the National Museum of Afghanistan that was being created at the time.

Philippe Stern, with his archaeological works in Cambodia on Phnom Kulen in 1936, shared this research vision. Successively Jeannine Auboyer, his former student in turn become director of the museum, took up the torch by shouldering, along with her position as Curator and Director, that of research fellow at the CNRS where she directed the Centre d’iconographie of the Indian world. In this spirit she notably welcomed to the Musée Guimet the Mission archéologique française d’iconographie du bassin de l’Indus (CNRS), under the responsibility of Jean-Marie Casal.

Succeeding her, Jean-François Jarrige became director of the museum in 1986 and promoter of its great renovation designed by the architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin (1996-2001). With his wife Catherine Jarrige he renewed the Mission archéologique de l’Indus as the Centre de recherches archéologiques-Indus Baluchistan-Asie centrale et orientale and directed the archaeological excavations of the site of Mehrgarh (Pakistan).

Today, succession is ensured with Vincent Lefèvre who has been running the digs of Mahasthangarh since 2013, after Jean-François Salles, within the Mission française de coopération archéologique in Bangladesh. The Musée Guimet is also present in Asia in cooperation projects. It thereby shares its expertise in the renovation of museums and contributes to museographic installation, as in Vietnam, by taking part in the renovation of the Cham sculpture museum in Da Nang and the museum of the History of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh-Ville (2005-2008), or in Afghanistan with the Kabul national museum (2003-2006).