Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Guimet Museum was first opened in Lyon in 1879 by French industrialist Émile Étienne Guimet. It was later transferred to Paris, where it reopened in 1889 at 6, Place d'Iéna in the 16th arrondissement.
The Guimet Museum holds one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Asian art found outside of Asia, with works from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, India, Nepal, and other countries. Its full official name is the Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet.
In 1876, the French minister of public instruction commissioned Émile Guimet to study the religions of the Far East. His travels produced a wide-ranging collection that included Chinese and Japanese porcelain and objects relating to the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
In early 2024, the museum was criticized for removing the word "Tibet" from its catalogues and exhibitions, replacing it with "Himalayan World" and in some cases using the Chinese name "Tubo." By July 2025, four associations had filed a lawsuit with the administrative court to compel the museum to restore references to Tibet.
Some of the museum's Cambodian artifacts are connected to the work of Louis Delaporte and Etienne Aymonier, the first scholars to study Khmer sculpture. They sent examples of Khmer art to France with the agreement of the King of Cambodia at a time when no museums existed in Southeast Asia.
From December 2006 to April 2007, the Guimet Museum sheltered collections from the Kabul Museum, including archaeological pieces from the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai-Khanoum and the Indo-Scythian treasure of Tillia Tepe.