Facing the Other: Charles Cordier (1827-1905) Ethnographic Sculptor

Sculptor Charles Cordier (1827-1905) captured attention worldwide when he exhibited a bust of a Sudanese man at the Paris Salon in 1848, the very year slavery was abolished in the French colonies. From 1851 to 1866 he served as the official sculptor of Paris's National History Museum, creating a series of spectacularly lifelike busts for their new ethnographic gallery (now housed in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris).

The Musee d'Orsay in Paris has organized an unprecedented exhibition of Cordier's work, highlighting seventy-five sculptures and almost forty ethnographic photographs. Filled with several texts on his life and work compiled by the exhibition's organizers, this book serves as the official exhibition catalogue but also includes a catalogue raisonne of six hundred of Cordier's works, of which four hundred are reproduced.