Art News

Quai Branly Museum in Paris exhibition displays the disturbing history of human zoos

PARIS (AP).- It’s a queasy experience, viewing chained tribal dancers do a white man’s bidding, or African women stripped and photographed to feed European curiosity. Until just a few generations ago, this is how most white people learned about those with skin of a different shade. A new Paris exhibit examines how for centuries, colonizers plucked villagers from Africa, the Americas or the South Pacific and put them on display half a world away. The demeaning tradition shaped racist attitudes that linger today. Curator Lilian Thuram, a former soccer star and now anti-racism advocate, hopes the exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris makes people question deep-held beliefs about the “other.” “You have to have the courage to say that each of us has prejudices, and these prejudices have a history,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. Thuram is an ideal public face for this unusual exhibit. A pensive black