In Discussion With Annie Vernay-Nouri

Couresey of Annie Vernay-Nouri and Louvre Abu Dhabi

Annie Vernay-Nouri was head curator of Arabic manuscripts in the Oriental Manuscripts Department at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. After studying sociology, she focused on the study of Arabic, where she obtained a master's degree in literature relating to the One Thousand and One Nights. She is a graduate of the Institut national des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques, where she also obtained a DEA (post-graduate diploma) in ancient Arabic prints. She has curated several exhibitions at the BnF, as well as being co-curator or scientific advisor for numerous exhibitions in France and abroad, and has contributed to numerous publications. Her research initially focused on the material study of Arabic manuscripts and on Islamic cartography, before specialising in the iconography of manuscripts from the Islamic world, fields in which she lectured at the Université Paris Diderot and the Ecole du Louvre. She then co-directed a BnF-Sorbonne Université research programme devoted to the illustrated Arabic manuscripts of Kalila wa Dimna, which resulted in the publication Les périples de Kalila wa Dimna, co-edited with Eloïse Brac de la Perrière and Aïda El Khiari (2022). This work has continued with the organisation of a study day in 2023 devoted to the iconographic journeys of Kalila wa Dimna.

I had the pleasure and honor of asking Annie about the personal highlights of her job as a curator, how she curates exhibitions that are informative and interesting to the audience, her current work on ‘From Kalīla wa Dimna to La Fontaine: Travelling through Fables’, and so much more.

UZOMAH: With this exhibition, the origins of this genre of fables are a genre of literature that typically consists of short stories featuring animals or inanimate objects that possess human-like qualities. The focus is on India and Greece, following Aesop's evolution in the Greco-Roman world and Ibn al-Muqaffa in the Arab-Islamic world. How does this exhibit pay tribute to how the Arabic translation of Ibn Al-Muqaffa played a pivotal role in the following translations, such as the Persian and French versions that Jean de La Fontaine based his translations?

ANNE: The aim of the exhibition was at first to show the universality of the fables. This literary genre is shared by different cultures and originated in a parallel way in the West and in the East. The first section of the exhibition is focused on the journeys of the fables. It is divided in three parts, corresponding to the three main traditions. The first one shows how the collection of stories was born in India with the Panchatantra around the 3rd century and how the fables will be translated into Arabic in the 8th century by the first of the great Arab prose writers, Ibn al-Muqaffa’. This version, named Kalila wa Dimna, is the departure of many other translations in Eastern and Western worlds until now.

In another side, the Western Fables took their origine in Greece around the 6th c. before C.E with the legendary fabulist Aesop. The corpus was revived by Latin poets and spread in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Latin and in others vernacular languages. At last, in the 17th c., the French writer and poet Jean de La Fontaine is at the crossroads of the two traditions. The first six books are inspired by Aesop but ten years after the first volume, he discovered the Oriental tradition, not directly from the Arabic text of Kalila wa Dimna but by a French translation of a Persian version. Around twenty-five fables come from Oriental tradition.

After this historical presentation of the fables, the second section “Telling stories” is organized around the content of the fables which are common to Kalila and La Fontaine. At last, the third section is refocused on “Kalila wa Dimna today” and shows that the text is always alive.

So, you can see that we begin with the three traditions, continue with only two for finishing only with Kalila wa Dimna which is the main subject of the exhibition.

U: Could you share a personal highlight of your job that best represents your journey to becoming a curator?

A: I’m now retired but I was previously curator in chief at the Bibliothèque nationale de France at the Oriental section of the department of manuscripts.  I was in charge of Arabic manuscripts. I had the chance to lead at the BnF during five years a research program devoted to the illustrated Arabic manuscripts of Kalila wa Dimna. This program was reflecting the place occupied by Kalila wa Dimna in the Middle East manuscript collections of the Bnf, with 16 illustrated copies in Arabic, Persian and Turkish without counting the non-illustrating manuscripts of the text. A large part of the results was published in 2022 in a bilingual book (articles in French or in English) “The Journeys of Kalila and Dimna : Fables in the Literature and Arts in the Islamic World”.

The program has finished in 2018. In parallel and independently, was born the project of making an exhibition around Kalila wa Dimna in the Louvre Abu Dhabi which will be organized by the BnF with me as curator. So I can say that I live with the two jackals Kalila and Dimna since a long time !

U: When meticulously planning an exhibition, what specific measures do you take to ensure that the exhibits in the Museum are informative, captivating, and educational for visitors? How do you consistently pique the audience's interest in the offerings?

A: When you are curating an exhibition, the danger is that you are a specialist who have a huge knowledge about the subject.  So, you have the temptation to want to say everything about it and to show all the artworks related with the subject.  In the curating process, there is always a phase of frustration when you realize that you must make crucial choices and put a limited number of pieces. You must also to have an understandable speech adapted to a wide audience. In this case, the target audience was clearly familial because, for everybody the fable is linked to an idea of entertainment.  Children read and enjoy them.  However, the purpose of the exhibition is sometimes a little complicated, particularly in the first section when it is showing the travels of the fables. So, it was necessary to introduce mediation devices to facilitate the understanding of the visitors in a playful form.

For example, in the first section, an animated map allows to understand the travels of the text. The visitor can also hear two fables.  In a little circular room, he can listen the story of “The Four Friends” lying on a giant book and seeing images of the fable projecting on the ceiling. In another place, a narrator in a form of hologram tells the story of “the Turtle and the two Ducks”. At the end of the exhibition, there is a reading room to watch some books of Kalila wa Dimna and the visitor can also create his own fable with AI.

U: How can art give a new perspective on life? What do you hope visitors take away from their initial impressions of design before they enter the Museum?

A: I saw the Louvre Abu Dhabi for the first time just some days before the opening in 2017. When I arrived, I was completely amazed by the architectural design of the Museum both outside and inside. And today every time I enter there, I always have the same impression of beauty and perfection. I think that every visitor lives the same aesthetic experience long before entering the museum and seeing the collections.

U: Could you delve into your process of selecting artists and their artwork? What specific criteria do you consider? Could you elaborate on the research process for an exhibit?

A: The first challenge for a curator is to find and choose the artworks that he will exhibit.  The problem is how articulate a scientific purpose and conciliate it with artworks available for loan.  In my case, the BnF co-organized and conceived the exhibition, so my roadmap was very clear, I had to find most of the artworks only in the varied collections of BnF and it’s the case for 108 works, basically manuscripts, printed books and engravings.  I was also allowed to search in other collections in France and in the Emirates, 30 relevant artworks for completing my selection.  The BnF collection is particularly rich in Kalila wa Dimna illustrated manuscripts but their number remains limited compared to the large choice of possibilities offered by the hundred and hundred editions and illustrations of La Fontaine at BnF. So, I had to exhibit all what it exists for the first category and to make a very strict selection for the second one.

For the contemporary artists, it was a little different.  It was very important for me to find artists whose artistic approach was completely inspired by Kalila wa Dimna. Six artists are exhibited here. I have met before three of them because they are living and working in Paris. Nabil Boutros has made an installation in big origamis retracing the fight between the lion and the bull.  Bady Dalloul and Katia Kameli who are from Arabic origin, have worked in Paris around their own memories of the text of Kalila wa Dimna.  The other artists come from Arab or Islamic countries and I saw their works only by photos. Some of them are inspired by Arabic or Persian Manuscripts, some others are taken from the stories of Kalila wa Dimna.

U: Could you explain in detail the role of a curator and how it influences the exhibitions and the Museum's overall narrative?

A: In my case, I am not a curator of the Museum but an outsider, so I have to enter in the Museum’s overall narrative.

U: What is your favorite artwork in the Museum's permanent collection, and why? How does it affect you personally?

A: I don’t have a favorite artwork in the Museum permanent collection. What I prefer in this museum is the confrontation in the same rooms of different cultures, particularly in the field of religion with the different sacred books next to each other.

U: How will the Museum bring more tourists to Abu Dhabi so that they can experience the great art it displays?

A: Louvre Abu Dhabi is the first universal museum in the Arab world and its main ambition is to explore the connections and links between the different civilisations and the different cultures.  One of the characteristics of the museum is to receive visitors from all over the world with varied cultural references. 

In this museal context, an exhibition like “From Kalila wa Dimna to La Fontaine, Travelling Through Fables” is aimed at visitors from every continent, showing the universality of different fable traditions and artworks from both East and West. It fulfils the Museum’s primary vocation to be opened to a very large public.

 For more information about Annie’s work as a curator on the exhibition ‘From Kalīla wa Dimna to La Fontaine: Travelling through Fables’, please visit the Louvre’s site here. The museum can also be found on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.