French study could trigger mass pressure for recall of African art
British museums may have to follow Report shows a new era of thought
African artworks held in French museums – richly carved thrones, doors to a royal kingdom, wooden statues imbued with spiritual meaning – may be heading back home to Africa at last.
French president em manuel Macron, trying to turn the page on France’s colonial past, received a report yesterday on returning art looted from African lands.
From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums had been eagerly awaiting the report by French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr, and commissioned by Mr Macron himself.
It recommends that French museums give back works that were taken without consent, if African countries request them – and could increase pressure on museums elsewhere in Europe to follow suit.
The experts estimate up to 90 per cent of African art is outside the continent, including statues, thrones and manuscripts. Tens of thousands of works are held by just one museum, the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, opened in 2006 to showcase non-european art – much of it from former French colonies. The museum would not immediately comment on the report.
The head of Ethiopia’s Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Yonas Desta, said the report showed “a new era of thought” in Europe’s relations with Africa.
“I’m longing to see the final French report,” he said.
Senegal’s culture minister Abdou Latif Coulibaly said: “It’s entirely logical that Africans should get back their artworks these works were taken in conditions that were perhaps legitimate at the time, but illegitimate today.”
The report is just a first step. Challenges ahead include enforcing the report’s recommendations and determining how objects were obtained and whom to give them to. The report is part of broader promises by Mr Macron to turn the page on France’s troubled relationship with Africa.
In a groundbreaking meeting with students in Burkina Faso last year, Mr Macron stressed the “undeniable crimes of European colonisation” and said he wants pieces of African cultural heritage to return to Africa “temporari- ly or definitively”. The French report could have broader repercussions.
In Cameroon, Professor Verkijika Fanso said: “France is feeling the heat of what others will face. Let their decision to bring back what is ours motivate others.”
Germany has worked to return art seized by the Nazis. In May the organisation that co-ordinates that effort, the German Lost Art Foundation, said it was starting a programme to research the provenance of cultural objects collected during the country’s colonial past.
Britain is also under pressure to return art taken from its former colonies.
Ethiopian officials have increased efforts to secure the return of looted artefacts and manuscripts from museums, personal collections and government institutions across Britain, including valuable items taken in the 1860s after battles in northern Ethiopia.