Macron’s promise of African heritage returns faces setbacks

Seven years on from Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to return Africa’s heritage, frustration grows about the lack of progress and a crucial colonial bill has stalled:

it has been seven years since French President Emmanuel Macron announced his landmark plan to return African heritage to the continent. His November 2017 declaration in Burkina Faso that "African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums" reignited the global debate over the restitution of colonial artefacts. Since then, the journey toward restitution has been slow and challenging. In January 2022, France’s Senate approved a bill — proposed by senators Catherine Morin-Desailly, Max Brisson, and Pierre Ouzoulias — to establish a national expert commission that would be consulted on all future non-European restitution cases. This bill also proposed facilitating the return of human remains held in French public collections, a law that was passed last December [] .

 

(Tamilla Hasanova, 'Macron’s promise of African heritage returns faces setbacks Restitution or retention?' Caliber.Az 28 November 2024 )

Delusion of the Director

Dan Hicks @profdanhicks
a truly bizarre claim from the new @britishmuseum Nicholas Cullinan on @BBCr4today this morning that the museum is “a collection of 8m objects— and the number of objects that are subject to discussion or contested, it’s less than twenty, it’s around fifteen”

Well, for a start, he's obviously counting the Parthenon Marbles bits as a single "object". Their website (Contested objects from the collection) pretends they care, but washes over a whole load of issues and conveniently does not mention some items...

Trophy Antiquities Scraps Bolster Scandinavian National Self-Worth

The National Museum of Denmark, after “careful consideration”, has refused requests from the Acropolis Museum in Athens to return three fragments of the Parthenon that are currently on display in Copenhagen (George Vardas, "The Parthenon Sculptures: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” Greek City Times Nov 24, 2023​.

According to the Danish Museum’s director, Dr Rane Willerslev, the sculptural fragments are of greater importance to the National Museum than if they were sent to Greece, noting that the majority of the surviving Parthenon sculptures are divided between London and Athens and the three fragments in Copenhagen have “one particular role for Danish cultural history”.

Umm, yeah. It is materiual proof that the little peninsula and islands were part of the same European trends that everybody elae was. Oh whoopee.

France's Words, and France's Actions on African Cultural Property Restitution

In 2017, with much fanfare, at the dawn of his first term, French President Emmanuel Macron made a commitment to restitution of African heritage from France within 5 years. That was five years ago. In that time only a few works have returned, with 90,000 still held by French public museums. What happened? (see Feiza Ben Mohamed, '5 years on, where are the objects looted from Africa that France's president promised to return?' Anadolu Agency 18.11.2022)

To assess the situation, in 2018 Macron appointed two experts to study and deliver their recommendations on restitution of the African works. They are Benedicte Savoy, art historian and member of the College of France, and Felwine Sarr, a Senegalese writer and academic, who were appointed to examine the conditions under which the works could be repatriated and protected in the countries they belong to. But five years later, it seems that the restitution process, which requires a legislative basis, remains very complex, so that only a few works have been returned to their African homes. To date, no fewer than 90,000 objects belonging to Africa are still held by French public museums, according to a study by French daily Le Monde.

 

Germany Hands Over Some Looted Artefacts To Namibia

Germany Hands Over Looted Artefacts To Namibia, But On loan (Channels Television May 30, 2022).

Namibia on Monday took delivery of 23 ancient pieces of jewellery, tools and other objects pillaged during colonial rule, and returned as an indefinite loan from Germany. The return of the artefacts is part of a project to encourage rapprochement between the two nations. “All the artefacts were collected during the Germany colonial era from different Namibian communities,” said the Museum Association of Namibia chairwoman, Hilma Kautondokwa. The returned items were taken mostly between the 1860s and the early 1890s, she said. Hundreds of other objects remain in Germany.

The items were handed over to the National Museum of Namibia by the Germany’s Ethnological Museum of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The return came after three years of talks The previous year, Germany repatriated skulls, bones and human remains that had been shipped to Berlin during the period for “scientific” experiments.

Berlin Breakthrough on Benin Bronzes

 

Germany and Nigeria have signed an agreement setting out a timetable for the restitution of artefacts looted from the royal palace of Benin in a British military raid in 1897.

Africa Update Honours Indefatigable Ghanaian scholar-activist, Dr. Kwame Opoku

 

Africa Update Vol. XXVIII. Issue 3. Summer 2021

Editorial

This issue of Africa Update is a tribute to the indefatigable Ghanaian scholar-activist,  Dr. Kwame Opoku, who has spent decades enlightening the public, and the academic community, about the innumerable African Antiquities confiscated by the colonial powers, after their invasions of Africa in the 19th and 20th century.  Dr. Opoku has written more than two hundred and seventy articles on the subject, to date.

Dr. Opoku continues to give us specific details on the location of these artifacts, and what should be done to recover them. His presentations at high profile international conferences, and his careful documentation of individual and generic misappropriated items, continue to stir the conscience of diverse peoples across the globe who recognize the injustice done to Africa during the colonial era.  In addition to significant losses of population as a result of colonial invasions during the European expansionist rampage of 1884 and after, significant loss of treasure occurred.

This issue of Africa Update includes six of the numerous articles that Dr. Opoku has written, on the issue, including his commentary on the recent decision by Germany to repatriate some Benin bronzes, originally looted by the British and then sold by the latter to German museums. Special thanks go to www.modernghana.com for permitting the publication of these articles.

Ciku Kimeria, in an article entitled “The battle to get Europe to return thousand of Africa’s stolen artifacts is getting complicated,” comments on the plunder of over a thousand pieces of cultural artifacts by the French, during the capture of the city of Oussebougou that brought down the Toucouleur Empire in 1890 (QZ.com/Africa/1758619). In that issue we are also reminded that at least seventy thousand African artifacts are lodged in the Musee du Quai, in France; one hundred and eighty thousand African artifacts, in the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium; seventy-five thousand African artifacts in the Humboldt Forum Germany; and sixty-nine thousand African artifacts in the British Museum.  Most of these artifacts were plundered or obtained suspiciously. In the case of Ethiopia, ancient manuscripts are scattered among hundreds of museums. Many were seized by the British at the Battle of Magdala, 1868.  Dr. Kwame Opoku’s passionate quest for the repatriation of stolen artifacts has been driven by his informed awareness of the past and present.

Africa Update thanks Dr. Kwame Opoku for his illuminating analyses and intellectual contributions to the discourse on looted African artifacts.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

Chief Editor, Africa Update

www2.ccsu.edu/africaupdate

Table of Contents

African Treasures -  Kwame Opoku's Quest for Justice

 Kwame Opoku:   Berlin decision on Benin restitution

Kwame Opoku:    Church of England  wishes to return two Benin artefacts to Nigeria. Is that enough?

Kwame Opoku:    Is the British Museum outmaneuvering Nigeria?

Kwame Opoku:    Talking about Benin Artifacts is not Enough 

Kwame Opoku:    Benin

Kwame Opoku:    From Restitution to Digitalization: Looted Benin treasures to go online