SpiceLines

On a wet morning, a visitor strolls past Patrick Blanc's chic
"mur vegetal" at the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris' newest and
most controversial museum.

I’m standing on the wet sidewalk outside the Musee du Quai Branly, Jean Nouvel’s controversial museum for the tribal arts that opened in 2006. And though the elegant girders of the Eiffel Tower soar above the museum’s boxy facade, my eyes are riveted to the lush vegetal wall just inches from my nose. This brilliant tapestry of ferns, mosses, and spiky-leaved plants in shades of lime, gold and burgundy shimmers in the light morning mist. In all there are 15,000 plants growing vertically up an exterior wall facing the Seine, like a rain forest magically tossed into a grey urban setting.

The mur vegetal is the work of Patrick Blanc, a 54-year-old botanist whose vertical gardens can also be found at the French Embassy in India and in the inner courtyard of Pershing Hall, a chic hotel in the 8th arrondissement. Blanc was Inspired by his travels through Malaysia, Thailand and other parts of Asia—yes, there he is, au naturel, on his website, coyly posed in a pool of water behind some branches--where he discovered colonies of plants growing in grottos and on cliffs, toppled tree trunks and the crevices of fallen boulders. To create similar eco-systems, he devised complicated structures of felt and plastic sheeting held in place by metal frames that can be mounted on the walls of urban buildings. The plants need no soil, but receive water and nutrients through a drip irrigation system.

So far the museum’s jardin seems to have survived the rigors of a chilly Paris winter, though there are a few bald spots. But children adore it—right now a tiny blond boy in miniature designer jeans is ecstatically patting a patch of emerald green moss—and grownups, myself included, are craning their necks upwards to gaze in awe at this pointilliste jungle.

The Eiffel Tower, just blocks away, looms over the museum's
modernist exterior. The architect was Jean Nouvel, who also
designed L'Institut du Monde Arab and the Fondation Cartier.

It’s somehow fitting that Blanc’s dreamy mur vegetal should be installed at a museum meant for the right side of the brain. The Branly has excited a lot of criticism, as much for its dark, confusing gallery spaces as for its alleged condescension to the indigenous cultures of Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas. One thing is quite clear: This is not a museum that I’ll be visiting in any kind of organized, linear fashion. As I ascend the gently sloping entrance ramp, with projected images of crashing waves, geishas and “one world” messages beneath my feet, I can tell that I’m leaving the rational world behind.

Take the snake, for instance. Architect Nouvel’s sinuous serpente is a low undulating wall, covered with buttery café au lait leather, encapsulating womblike banquettes and video screens running clips of enclosed gardens in North Africa or dancing tribesmen in New Guinea. It’s a place for dreaming, maybe sleeping, and I haven’t even gotten to the main galleries yet. And when I do, I don’t find spacious rectilinear halls that progress logically from one to another. Instead, corners are rounded, the atmosphere is dark and moody (think shades of terracotta red and purple), and objects lit by overhead spots emerge suddenly out of the darkness.

In this strange murky world, there are no paths with straight lines, but everything is somehow connected. A left turn and I’m in a covered passageway listening to a gentle high-pitched chant while gazing at a New Guinea funeral pirogue with a bonito reliquary (the bonito was the symbolic equivalent of a human head taken in a hunting expedition). Ten steps ahead I come upon a “forest clearing” populated by towering Melanesian ceremonial drums adorned with carved bird-like faces with frightening beaks. A right turn takes me to Siberia, where a heavily fringed shaman’s dress made of wild reindeer hide seems to gyrate in the air, even though the shaman himself is not there. Maybe just invisible. Then I enter one of several boites de musique ("music boxes") where I hear sitar music and see images of prayer flags and candles flickering on the Ganges, before drifting into a cramped room where I glimpse disturbing blank-faced masks from Mali through narrow slits in the wall.

All these treasures are grouped according to broad geographic regions, but the focus is really on each individual work. This allows the viewer to marvel at, say, a near life-size figure of a bare-breasted queen sitting on a lizard stool entirely covered with tiny, intricately patterned glass beads. She’s from Cameroon, made in the 19th century, and though the symbolism is undoubtedly important—all is explained on the accompanying placard—this “fragmentary” presentation allows you to contemplate the hand of the craftsman without cultural or historical baggage. This is a heretical attitude that few museums would espouse—probably not even the Branly--but it signals a refreshingly out-of-the-box approach to the museum experience.

As for me, I am besotted by an early 20th century Shan mask for the lead cow of a caravan traversing Myanmar’s Golden Triangle. Sprouting peacock feathers, it is studded with round mirrors and hundreds of tiny buttons. Just the sort of thing that might swim out of a vaguely hallucinogenic dream--not a bad way, actually, to view the Branly.

The Musee du Quai Branly is located at 37 quai Branly, Paris 75007. Telephone: 01 56 61 70 00. Website: www.quaibranly.fr. The highly praised restaurant, Les Ombres, is on the fifth floor and staff will not direct you to the elevator unless you have a reservation—helas, they were full the day I was there. Next time I'll call a week or two ahead. Telephone: 08 26 10 08 45.

For more on Patrick Blanc, see the very interesting website for Echo Studio, a Chicago based architectural firm dedicated to sustainable building. I bought two of Blanc’s books at the Branly shop: Follies Vegetales (Editions Chene, 2007) which is full of photographs of natural murs vegetaux from his travels in Asia and Le Bonheur d’Etre Plante (Maren Sell Editeurs, 2005).