The bibliography of scholarly publications relating to the works in the museum is a reflection of the impact of Henri Cernuschi’s collection in his lifetime (1821-1896) on the Parisian public and on artists such as Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) and craftsmen such as Émile Reiber (1826-1893) from the house of Christofle. Numerous articles and writings were devoted to the items that were exhibited at the Exposition Orientale then at the Palais de l’Industrie on Cernuschi’s return in 1873, and to the vases from the collection shown at the 1880 Exposition de l’Union Centrale on the theme of metal.

Interest in the collections has endured since the museum’s founding in 1898 to the present day, thanks to major international exhibitions in which pieces from the museum were shown already in Cologne in 1926 and London in 1936, and to catalogues raisonnés and exhibition catalogues, by the successive curators, on the museum’s Chinese collections (2009, 2013 and 2016), Japanese collections (1986 et 2009), Vietnamese collections (2006), Korean collections (2017) and Central Asian collections (2012).

Selected bibliography

 

The travels of the banker Henri Cernuschi – in the company of the art critic Théodore Duret (1838-1927) – in Asia, from late 1871 to January 1873, resulted in a collection of bronzes, ceramics, books and photographs.

On his return to Paris, Cernuschi presented his collection at the Exposition Orientale and then at the Palais de l’Industrie for the first Congrès International des Orientalistes – August 1873 to January 1874 – which he organised and for which he was awarded a medal “for services rendered”. It was a revelation for the French public, as various writings and articles show.

Since 1911, the Cernuschi Museum has organised numerous exhibitions, both within and outside of its walls, and they have often been pioneering, a notable example being the one held in June 1946 on contemporary Chinese painting, which presented the work of Zao Wou-ki 趙無極 (1920-2013) for the first time in France as well as artists such as Zhang Daqian 張大千 (1899-1983), Pan Yuliang 潘玉良 (1894-1977) and Wu Zuoren吴作人 (1908-1997), whose works were shown again in 1961, 1977, 1987 and 2016.