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France urged to return looted African art treasures France urged to change heritage law and return looted art to Africa
(about 4 hours later)
Experts appointed by Emmanuel Macron will advise him this week to allow the return of thousands of African artworks held in French museums, a radical shift in policy that could put pressure on other former colonial powers, including the UK, to follow suit. 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.
Calls have been growing in Africa for the restitution of its cultural treasures, but French law strictly forbids the government from ceding state property, even in well-documented cases of pillaging. 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.
Yet the French president raised hopes for a change during a speech in Burkina Faso in November last year, saying “Africa’s heritage cannot just be in European private collections and museums”. 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.
He later asked the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy and the Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to study the matter, and they are to present Macron with their report on Friday. “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.”
According to a copy seen by AFP, they recommend amending French law to allow the restitution of cultural works if bilateral accords are struck between France and African states. 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 change would apply in particular to works held in museums that were “transferred from their original territory during the French colonial period”, the report said. 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.
“We propose changing heritage laws so that all types of cases can be taken into account, and the criteria of consent can be invoked,” Sarr told the French paper Liberation in an article posted late on Tuesday. 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.
The report was welcomed by advocates of the restitution of works that were bought, bartered or stolen.
“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,” Marie-Cecile Zinsou, a daughter of Benin’s former prime minister and president of the Zinsou Art Foundation in Cotonou, told AFP.
While the ownership controversy is nothing new, the issue was thrust into the spotlight in 2016 when President Patrice Talon of Benin asked France to return items including carvings, sceptres and sacred doors from the Royal Palaces of Abomey, formerly the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey.
France refused, citing its law that museums are forbidden from permanently parting with any piece in their collections.
Of the estimated 90,000 African artworks in French museums, around 70,000 are at the Quai Branly museum, created by the former president Jacques Chirac, an admirer of African and Asian art.
In order to proceed with any restitutions, “a request would have to be lodged by an African country, based on inventory lists which we will have sent them,” according to the report.
The prospect has raised hackles among some curators and art dealers who say it would eventually empty museums and galleries in some western countries.
Britain too has faced numerous calls to return artefacts to the countries they originate from, including the Elgin marbles to Greece and the Benin bronzes to Nigeria.
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.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.
Elsewhere in Europe, the French experts said 37,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa were at Vienna’s Weltmuseum and 180,000 were at Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. 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 report said such collections were effectively depriving Africans of their artistic and cultural heritage. “On a continent where 60% of the population is under the age of 20 years old, what is first and foremost of great importance is for young people to have access to their own culture, creativity, and spirituality from other eras,” it said. 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.
AFP contributed to this report
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