Chirac inaugurates Europe's largest Asian art musuem

The Guimet National Museum for Asian Art, which comprises some 45,000 works, will open for the public on Saturday, after nearly four years of renovation costing 350 million francs (50.7 million dollars). The collection of the Guimet Museum comprises some 45,000 works, 3,500 of which will be exhibited over 13,000 square metres of space. It includes Chinese, Japanese and Korean paintings as well as rarely exhibited Buddhist artworks from throughout the region.

The museum opened originally in 1878 in Lyon intended as a museum of religions by the French industrialist who founded it, Emile Guimet. It moved to Paris in 1889. In 1905, a dancer named Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod performed Javanese and other exotic dances in the museum's library. Twelve years later, she was executed in Spain for allegedly having spied for Germany under the name of Mata Hari.

Education Minister Jack Lang, who was culture minister when the decision was taken to renovate the Guimet, called the enlarged and refurbished museum "a model". "The rare and valuable collections have found their proper place at last," Lang said.

(la/dpa)