[Civsoc-mw] Fwd: France Museum to Return Africa's Artifacts?

Fri Nov 23 05:26:27 CAT 2018

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: The African Scientific Institute (www.asi-org.net) <
AfricanScientificInstitute at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2018 at 01:18
Subject: France Museum to Return Africa's Artifacts?
To: <amuula at medcol.mw>

*What do you think?*

*France urged to change heritage law and return looted art to AfricaReport
commissioned by Macron recommends restitution of artworks taken during
colonial era*

Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy were asked by the French president,
Emmanuel Macron, to look into the issue of looted African artworks held in
the country’s museums. Photograph: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images

A report commissioned by Emmanuel Macron will call for thousands of African
artworks in French museums taken without consent during the colonial period
to be returned to the continent.

Unless it could be proven that objects were obtained legitimately, they
should be returned to Africa permanently, not on long-term loan, said the
authors of the report, the Senegalese writer and economist Felwine Sarr and
the French historian Bénédicte Savoy.

They have recommended changing French law to allow the restitution of
cultural works to Africa, after Macron announced that he wanted it to begin
within five years.

“I cannot accept that a large part of the cultural heritage of several
African countries is in France,” the French president said last year in
Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. “There are historical
explanations for this but there is no valid, lasting and unconditional
justification. African heritage cannot be only in private collections and
European museums – it must be showcased in Paris but also in Dakar, Lagos
and Cotonou. This will be one of my priorities.”

The extent to which France, Britain and Germany looted Africa of its
artefacts during colonialism is not known, but according to the report,
which will be released this Friday, about 90% of Africa’s cultural heritage
currently lies outside the continent.

The report’s authors travelled to Mali, Senegal, Cameroon and Benin and
looked through the works held by the Musée du quai Branly, a museum focused
on non-European cultures in Paris, and found that about 46,000 of its
90,000 African works were “acquired” between 1885 and 1960 and may have to
be returned.

African artwork displayed in Paris depicting the Ato ceremony of the
Kingdom of Dahomey, circa 1934. Photograph: Gérard Julien/AFP/Getty Images

The report could pave the way for other former colonial powers to consider
the provenance of their own collections. British troops destroyed much of
the beautiful city of Benin in 1897, burning the royal palace to the ground
and looting 4,000 works of art, including elegant brass heads and intricate
plaques depicting war exploits, known as the Benin bronzes.

On Tuesday, the governor of Easter Island in the Pacific tearfully begged
the British Museum to return one of its famous statues. The London museum
has held the Hoa Hakananai’a, one of the most spiritually important of the
Chilean island’s stone monoliths, for 150 years.

The British Museum in London has about 700 articles from Benin, and about
100 of them are displayed in an underground gallery. Several European
institutions including the British Museum plan to “lend” works to a new
museum in Benin City, in modern-day Nigeria, due to open in 2021. The
security of African works is sometimes cited as a reason not to hand them
over to African museums.

The systematic looting of African art took different forms: the researchers
found that as well as being the spoils of war, theft and pillage, many of
the works had been “bought” for fractions of their real value.

A law would need to be passed in France to change the code of patrimony,
and then African countries would have to request that their stolen works be
returned. They would be better equipped than ever to do so, because the
researchers have sent them lists of the objects.

“Travelling in Africa, we saw the effect that these inventories can have,
especially on museum directors,” Savoy told Libération. “They never had
access to these lists, and never in such a clear and structured way. Highly
knowledgeable researchers and teachers were really incredulous when we told
them there were so many of their countries’ objects at quai Branly.”

To start with, they have recommended that palace doors, thrones and statues
stolen from Abomey be returned – something the modern-day country of Benin
has long requested.

“Today it feels as if we’re just a step away from recovering our history
and being finally able to share it on the continent,” said Marie-Cécile
Zinsou, the daughter of Benin’s former prime minister and the president of
the Zinsou Art Foundation in Cotonou.

*What do you think?*
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-- 
Adamson S. Muula PhD, MPH, MBBS, CPH, PGDip (Public Health Ethics), PGDip
(Global Health), PGD (Palliative Care)
Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health
University of Malawi, College of Medicine
School of Public Health and Family Medicine
Department of Public Health
Chimutu Building Room 850
Private Bag 360, Chichiri
Blantyre 3
Malawi
Email: amuula at medcol.mw
Cell: +265 884233486
Skype address: adamson.sinjanimuula
Publications list: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Muula
*orcid.org/0000-0003-4412-9773 <http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4412-9773>*
Webpage: http://biostat.maths.cc.ac.mw/people/staff/Adamson_S._Muula
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