Born from the passion of a richissime industrial Lyonese, Emile Guimet (1836-1918), for the religions of traditional Antiquity and of the East, this museum, sheltered as of his creation in the beautiful neo-classic building of the place of Iéna, accomodated in his first years of existence the personal collections of his founder, illustrating the religious iconography primarily. This religious orientation was little by little abandoned after the death of Guimet, and the museum, attached to the Management of the museums of France since 1927, resolutely turned to arts of Asia, which one discovered at the time. The transfer of the rich person melt of Khmer art of the Indochinese museum of Trocadéro, dismantled in 1935, and of the whole of works of the department of Asian arts of Louvre, in 1945, ends up ratifying the Asian vocation of the Guimet museum.
Re-open in 2001 after several years of restoration, the Guimet Museum presents a complete panorama of arts of Asia thanks to one of the most beautiful collections of the kind at the world, started in 1879 with the Lyons industrialist Emile Guimet. On several levels are presented Khmer masterpieces (sculptures of Angkor), Chinese (“the Li Yu Treasury”), Indians (“the King-Snake of Madurai”, “dancing Civa”, “Gupta Buddha”), Japanese (“the Folding screen of the Portuguese”) and gréco-Buddhist (“Excavations of Begrâm”). Bronze and stone sculptures, paintings, ceramics, lacquers, fabrics and goldsmitheries open to the visitor the doors the East in a completely new museography.
