La Galerie du Temps: audacity, always audacity!

"We don't understand anything about it."

When ten years ago Parisian journalists specializing in museums were invited to discover the Galerie du Temps, many were those who, at first glance, felt confused.

They who, until then, had the habit of surveying a Louvre arranged by departments, paintings on one side, sculptures on the other as in any classic Third Republic museum, here they were embracing in one block, in a chronological synthesis , treasures previously separated.

With even archaeological remains and works of art, from the East as well as from the West.

To discover

• Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection

Read also

Since then, we have become accustomed to this decompartmentalization that the parent company - a palace full of wings, floors, halls and rooms - cannot offer within it.

This revolutionary museography has even flourished.

From the museum of Nantes to those of Amiens, Grenoble or Orléans, the arts now readily work together, for a better understanding of cultures and their interactions.

Multiple comparisons

The Galerie du Temps presents more than 200 regularly renewed pieces (with the exception of 70 deemed more "structuring"), an expression of the encyclopedic vocation of the Louvre.

And, now, we are even going beyond this, since African, American and Oceanian objects deposited by the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac are now included.

These significant examples of the multiple human horizons include masterpieces as much as possible.

As currently, opening the stroll, the famous

emblem of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities.

As it was discovered by the archaeologist Auguste Mariette, a child of Pas-de-Calais, we see that the local or regional resonance is also welcome here.

Read also

Past the scribe, on the outward and return journey of these 120 meters on a slight slope, absolutely refined in a semi-natural gray-blue light, multiple comparisons, to the right, to the left, in front and behind, underline such an influence or such a difference between cultures and centuries.

The works around which we can turn - nothing is hung on the walls - dialogue, agree in styles, in schools, measure themselves against each other or enter into synergy.

The first contemporary work

Here, in depth, monotheisms succeed animist and polytheist cults.

There, in the width, the Mesopotamian and Persian world finds itself in contact with the Hellenic and the Egyptian, as was also the case at the time.

Further, the arts of Venice form a bridge between those of Islam and those of the European Middle Ages.

Mediators point out these reconciliations to the curious.

At the entrance to the Galerie du Temps, the first contemporary work of the place has been installed, a photographic fresco by Pascal Convert evoking the Afghan Buddhas of Bâmyân.

And on the right side wall, engraved in its polished aluminum, the true backbone of the course, a chronology unfolds.

It runs over more than six millennia.

Read also

The local public, hitherto poor in cultural facilities, quickly found its way.

Almost without any museum experience at the outset, he appropriated La Galerie du Temps more spontaneously than the Parisian visitor, who today is also very largely satisfied.

Mission successful on both sides, therefore.

Everyone walks for an hour and a half on average in this universe - ours at its best.

“Follow all the news from