On Saturday [September 21], Tibetan activists convened outside the MusĂ©e Guimet in Paris to protest the museumâs decision to replace exhibition materials that identify certain artifacts as Tibetan by replacing it with the Chinese name for the region. Activists claim the change to the language is problematic for deferring to a Chinese political narrative thatâs historically aimed to erase Tibetan cultural identity from public spaces.
The mass protest, which some sources estimate attracted 800 demonstrators, followed a report in the French newspaper Le Monde alleging that MusĂ©e Guimet and the MusĂ©e du quai Branly, two prominent Parisian museums that house collections of Asian art, altered their exhibition materials cataloging Tibetan artifacts as deriving instead from then Chinese term âXizang Autonomous Region.â According to the same report, the MusĂ©e Guimet renamed its Tibetan art galleries as deriving from the âHimalayan world.â
A handful of Tibetan cultural advocacy groups based in France penned letters to both museums, requesting formal meetings to discuss the reasons behind and implications of the terminology changes, a request that activists say was accepted by MusĂ©e du quai Branly, but not itâs peer MusĂ©e Guimet.