Paris museum is no work of art: At the new Branly, Nouvel's concept obscures contents

It's the Musee du quai Branly, or, in English, the Museum on the
Branly Embankment. It stands on the Left Bank of the Seine here, just a
bit downstream from the Louvre.

It's the new building everyone says you've got to see when you visit this legendarily beautiful city.

The
Branly is a museum of ``the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the
Americas," in other words, everything that isn't Europe. Its architect
is Jean Nouvel, a Frenchman and one of a clutch of 20 or so celebrated
so-called ``starchitects" who now seem to get most of the prize
architectural jobs around the world. His Guthrie Theater recently
opened in Minneapolis.

Musee Branly makes you question the whole
concept of starchitects. It's been designed in the manner of a World's
Fair pavilion. By that I mean it's a hey-look-at-me-I'm-an-architect
building, intended to grab your attention by upstaging everything
around it.