Swiss collector with a keen eye, bibliophile and lover of French poetry of the 16th centuryth, Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller has cultivated throughout his life an extraordinary curiosity and an extremely fine knowledge of the arts of the world, especially those of Africa and Oceania.
In 1977, he opened in Geneva with his wife Monique Mueller the remarkable Barbier-Mueller museum from the collection initiated in 1907 by Josef Mueller. In 2010, he created the Fondation Culturelle Musée Barbier-Mueller, which promotes ethnological research and the fight against the forgetting of early civilizations. From 1997 to 2012, his pre-Columbian art collection was also exhibited at the Nadal Palace in Barcelona.
A great friend of French museums, he was a member of the Conseil artistique des musées nationaux from 2004 to 2013. With his wife, he was one of the benefactors of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum, where he accompanied the creation and enriched the collections in an extraordinary way with more than 500 donations.
Audrey Azoulay, Minister of Culture and Communication, sends her sincere condolences to her family and loved ones.