Guimet Museum
National museum of Asian arts in Paris, France
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Through Buddhist art and Tibet
Founded in the late 19th century, it is located in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, at 6, Place d'Iéna. Its name literally translated into English is the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, or Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts.
History
Founded by Émile Étienne Guimet, a French industrialist and traveler, the museum first opened in Lyon in 1879 but was later transferred to Paris, opening on the Place d'Iéna in 1889. Devoted to travel, Guimet was in 1876 commissioned by the minister of public instruction to study the religions of the Far East, and the museum contains many of the fruits of this expedition, including a fine collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain and objects relating not merely to the religions of the East, but also to those of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. One of its wings, the Panthéon Bouddhique, displays Buddhist artworks.
Some of the museum's artifacts, originating from Cambodia, are connected with the studies conducted by the first scholars to be interested in Khmer sculpture, Louis Delaporte and Etienne Aymonier. They sent examples of Khmer art to France at a time when museums were not existing in Southeast Asia, with the agreement of the King of Cambodia, to show to Europe the high level of the ancient Khmer culture.
The museum's Thai holdings include architectural reliefs of the Dvāravatī and Sukhothai periods, which reached it through an exchange of deposits with the Bangkok National Museum arranged between 1939 and 1948. The Sukhothai group consists of atlante lions and heads of brahmins and devatā. To it was added in 2021, by purchase at public sale from the Rousset collection, a stucco head of a Buddha or a disciple, MA 13121. Pierre Baptiste compares the head with the 168 disciples modelled around the basement of the principal stupa at Wat Mahathat in Sukhothai, and dates it with them to about 1345.
From December 2006 to April 2007, the museum harboured collections of the Kabul Museum, with archaeological pieces from the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai-Khanoum, and the Indo-Scythian treasure of Tillia Tepe.
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Works of art of the museum
Greco-Buddhist art
Serindian art
Chinese art
Indian art
Southeast Asian art
Controversies
In early 2024, the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration was joined by a group of Asian scholars published on 03 September by Le Monde, and by the French Senate's Tibet Support Group in strongly criticizing the museum for removing the word "Tibet" from its catalogues and exhibitions. Guimet Museum had changed the appellation of Tibet to "Himalayan World". It was also criticized for referring to Tibet by the Chinese name "Tubo", which is considered inappropriate, while other regions neighboring China are designated by their modern names.
When questioned on the subject by deputy Charles de Courson in March 2025, the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, defended the museum, arguing that the reference to the Himalayan world is long-standing and that other museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, use a similar categorization.
In July 2025, four associations filed a lawsuit with the administrative court to compel the Guimet Museum to rewrite the labels relating to Tibet, arguing that the museum's statutory mission is to be a tool for disseminating culture and knowledge, and that removing all references to Tibet contravenes this mission. For the France-Tibet association, this controversy illustrates China's political and cultural influence over the Guimet Museum.
In an opinion piece published in the newspaper Le Figaro in July 2025, the Guimet Museum refuted these accusations and denounced an "unfounded attack based on arguments that are more political than cultural and scientific."