Report on the restitution of African cultural heritage

The report on the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics (in French: Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain) is a report written by the Senegalese academic and writer Felwine Sarr and the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy, published online in November 2018 in an official French version and an English translation.[1]

Commissioned by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, this report was presented to the public on November 23, 2018[2] and since then has triggered numerous controversial reactions in the international discussion about claims for restitution of African art from museums in Europe or America. Following Macron's "keynote address"[3] on November 28, 2017, on the policy of France in sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the French president asked the two academics to assess the history and composition of public collections in France as well as a plan for the subsequent steps for eventual restitutions. His motivation for a fundamental reorientation of the cultural policy of France with regard to Africa was expressed in the following words:

"I am from a generation of French people for whom the crimes of European colonization cannot be disputed and are part of our history."

— Emmanuel Macron, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Nov 2017

For the first time, a French president and his government have recognized a moral right of restitution of cultural heritage, items of which are, according to French law, considered to be the inalienable property of the French state.[4]

By means of this report, appropriate measures for restitutions of collections in France to their countries of origin have been formulated. At the same time, the report has raised concrete expectations in African countries concerned with the restitution of their cultural heritage.[5] The scope of this report relates only to the former French sub-Saharan colonies whose cultural heritage has been largely taken to Europe during and following colonial times.[6] Furthermore, the report also presents recommendations for the preparation of restitutions, such as international cooperation, provenance research, legal frameworks and the appropriate final presentation of the cultural objects involved, both in African museums and in digital forms.

The authors and their mission

The Senegalese social scientist, musician and economist Felwine Sarr became known internationally through his book Afrotopia.[7] Here, he proposes postcolonial theories for the present and future view of African countries.[8] The development of African democracies should not be brought about by reproducing Western models; instead Africa should reinvent itself through a synthesis of traditional and contemporary forms of social organization. Together with the political scientist Achille Mbembe from Cameroon, Sarr founded the “Ateliers de la Pensée”, an association of about thirty academics and artists with the aim of creating a space for intellectual debate in Africa.[9]

The French art historian Bénédicte Savoy teaches art history at the Technical University of Berlin and is also a professor at the Collège de France in Paris. Savoy is internationally recognized as an expert on the unlawful acquisition of cultural heritage and has published works on looted art in the context of war.[10] As she has been living and working in Berlin for many years, she is also considered an expert on the restitution of African cultural heritage in German collections and actively participates in research and public discussions about this issue.[11]

In his official letter of appointment,[12] Macron instructed the two authors to engage in discussions and workshops with various stakeholders in Africa as well as in France, including research on the colonial history of African cultural heritage.[13] Furthermore, Macron requested concrete proposals and a timetable with proposed actions for the return of cultural objects. Through his explicit statement, "Dialogue and participation must accompany all stages of this work",[14] Macron not only indicated a specific approach, but also opened the door to public debate about his new cultural policy and the resulting report. Since then, much public debate has been triggered by his fundamental call for a reorientation of French cultural policy and the return of important cultural objects to their countries of origin.

The contents of the report

The introductory chapter, entitled “A Long Duration of Losses“ describes the history of African cultural heritage in the context of European colonisation. Central themes are the forceful appropriation of cultural objects as crime against the communities of origin. Also, the importance of collecting, studying and exhibiting African heritage, first as curios and later on as ethnological objects, by European museums and scientists is presented as a central aspect of a history of violence and domination. Referring to similar intentions to those expressed in their own report, Sarr and Savoy recall that in 1978, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, who was then the director of UNESCO, pleaded in favour of a rebalancing of global cultural heritage between the northern and the southern hemispheres. They quote M'Bow's speech "A Plea for the Return of an Irreplaceable Cultural Heritage to those who created it" as follows:

The peoples who have been victims of this plunder, sometimes for hundreds of years, have not only been despoiled of irreplaceable masterpieces but also robbed of a memory which would doubtless have helped them to greater self knowledge and would certainly have helped others understand them better. [...]They know, of course, that art is for the world and are aware of the fact that this art work, which tells the story of their past and shows what they really are, does not speak to them alone. They are happy that men and women elsewhere can study and admire the work of their ancestors. They also realize that certain works of art have for too long played too intimate a part in the history of the country to which they were taken for the symbols linking them with that country to be denied and for the roots that have taken hold to be severed. [...] These men and women who have been deprived of their cultural heritage therefore ask for the return of at least the art treasures which best represent their culture, which they feel are the most vital and whose absence causes them the greatest anguish.  This is a legitimate claim.

— Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, former Director of UNESCO, Paris, 1978[15]

Furthermore, the report considers the mobilisation of public opinion since the beginning of the 2010s to be one of the main motivations for a change of attitudes in Europe.[16] Based on their assessment that approximately 90% of all cultural heritage from Sub-Saharan Africa is in the possession of Western collections,[17] the authors understand their report primarily as a call for the timely restitution of artifacts and for the establishment of a new relationship of Europe towards Africa on the basis of mutual recognition.

After this brief, but focused history of African colonial art in Western collections and the previous claims for restitution, the three further chapters entitled To Restitute, Restitutions and Collections and Accompanying the Returns discuss the central aspects of the tasks associated with such restitutions. Here, the authors suggest both criteria for restitution as well as a concrete timetable for the French and African authorities to follow. Finally, the appendices of the report describe the methods and steps followed by the authors, supported by corresponding documents, charts and figures on the collections in France as well as information on museums in Africa. Due to its extensive holdings of approx. 70,000 objects from Africa and its detailed archives on the provenance of the objects, the Musée du quai Branly in Paris occupies a special position in the report's list. The report ends with photographs and detailed information on thirty outstanding objects in this museum, which are considered as priorities for future restitution.[18]

The report also identifies the following important measures for a comprehensive reorientation of cultural relations: only through respectful international cooperation, with access to research, archives and documentation for people in Africa or in the African diaspora can the wide gaps between Africa and the West relating to the preservation, study and wider appreciation of African culture be narrowed. These measures include joint research and training by the participating museums, the exchange of temporary exhibitions - also among African countries - as well as the material support for appropriate networks or infrastructures for the museums in Africa and the experts working for them.[19] To ensure that knowledge of African cultural heritage reaches younger generations, the authors also recommend effective education initiatives.

The historical and geopolitical context

Although the Sarr/Savoy report and the accompanying debates refer to the restitution of cultural heritage from Africa, Macron's announcement on his first visit to Africa as president of France stands in the wider context of the history, present and future of French and European Africa policy.[20] In view of the growing political emancipation of some African countries from France, as well as the growing influence of China in Africa, French foreign policy is interested to maintain and develop its privileged relationship with West African countries and the wider Francophone world.
Finally, the discussions and the ethical justification of restitutions are examples of a changing view of European colonialism in Africa. Due to each country's colonial past and the present public assessment of this past, this historical re-evaluation has taken different paths in France, Great Britain, Belgium and in Germany. The contents of this report had been previously supported, as previous reports made UNESCO attempted to raise the issue of restitution, making a plea for the return of cultural heritage. [21]

Reactions and controversies

France

Even before the report was published, Macron's announcement provoked both affirmative or critical, and even negative comments.[22][23] Despite the announcement by the French president of a timely restitution, the legal requirements for such restitutions are by no means given: In France, all public assets, including the collections of public collections, such as museums, libraries or other cultural institutions, are regarded as inalienable.[24] Contrary to some public reactions by museum curators and journalists, however, the report does not recommend a sweeping return of all African cultural heritage from France. Rather, Sarr and Savoy propose that bilateral diplomatic arrangements be made for the restitution of significant pieces on the basis of proposals by African experts. As a general recommendation, however, the authors plead for a permanent restitution of illegally acquired cultural objects. They explicitly reject the temporary return of such items mentioned by Macron and proposed by some museum curators. The nature of future restitutions from France thus depends on political decisions to change the legal framework and the entry into international contracts as proposed by the report.  At a conference in June 2019, attended by some 200 academics and representatives of Ministries of Culture from Europe and Africa, the French Minister of Culture only pledged that "France will examine all requests presented by African nations", but asked them not to "focus on the sole issue of restitution".[25]

On July 15, 2020, the French government announced a draft law that allows for the permanent restituion of cultural objects from French collections to Senegal and Benin. Already in November 2019, the French prime minister had presented an historic sabre to the Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar that is said to have belonged to Omar Saïdou Tall, a prominent 19th-century West African spiritual leader who fought French colonialists in the 1850s. This symbolic item,[26] as well as 26 African statues, that had been looted by French troups during the sacking of Abomey Palace in 1892 and donated by the French colonel Alfred Dodds to a predecessor of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, will be the first permanent restitutions under the new law.[27]

Germany

Despite its relatively short colonial history, limited to a few African countries such as Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon and Togo, a very large number of African cultural objects are in German public collections. One prominent example is the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, which is scheduled to be reopened as part of the future Humboldt-Forum in September 2020. Similar questions to those raised by Sarr and Savoy have led to intensive public discussions about Germany's colonial past and its colonial collections.[28]

Given that cultural policy in Germany is the domain of the different federal states (Länder) and that many museums are independent or semi-public institutions, museum directors face less legal obstacles to restitution than in France, and there have been several cases of recent restitutions, for example to Namibia. Moreover, at the beginning of 2019, the Department of International Cultural Policy of the Federal Foreign Office, the Ministers for Cultural Affairs of the Länder and the municipal cultural organizations issued a joint statement on the handling of collections from colonial contexts.[29] With these guidelines, the collections in Germany have set new foundations for the research on provenance, international cooperation and repatriation. With respect to a new kind of cooperation, the Ethnological Museum in Berlin and the University of Dar es Salaam have started a Tanzanian-German research project about shared histories of cultural objects.[30]

Belgium

In Belgium, the Royal Museum of Central Africa (aka. Africa Museum) houses the largest collection of more than 180,000 cultural and natural history objects, mainly from the former Belgian Congo, today's Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As part of its first major renovation in more than a 100 years, a new approach of “decolonization” towards the presentation of cultural heritage in the museum has been carried out.[31] To this end, the public collections of the Africa Museum have been complemented by elements of contemporary life in the DRC. Also, Belgian sculptures showing Africans in a colonial context have been relegated to a special room on the history of the collections. The influence of the discussion in France has also led to announcements to change the relevant laws and to intensify cooperation with representatives of African countries.[32]

United Kingdom

Collections like those held in the British Museum in London have received requests for restitution since the independence of former colonies, most prominently regarding the world-famous Benin Bronzes. In the context of intensified international discussion, a new willingness to cooperate with African experts can be observed here, too. Thus, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford invited professionals from East Africa to share their view of the cultural objects in the collection.[33] However, the Directors of both the British Museum and of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Minister of Culture have spoken against permanent restitution. Like many other cultural organisations in Europe, they prefer cooperation and circulation of objects from their collections in the form of temporary exhibitions in Africa.

United States

Even prior to the report by Sarr and Savoy, many collections in the US had already looked into the provenance of their objects representing African or other non-Western art.[34] Thus, provenance research and awareness to keep their collections above reproach are increasingly prompting museum curators to favourably respond to African demands for restitution. Looking at the numbers of objects, however, and just like in Europe, there are only few known items that have been “deaccessed” for such reasons, for example to Nigeria.[35] In view of the many outstanding artworks scattered around the Western world or in private collections, which can be publicly seen only in temporary exhibitions in Western countries, but not in Africa,[36] one can hardly imagine the loss of African heritage caused by the refusal of restitution to their countries of origin.


Digitisation and open access

In a statement about the report's call for digitisation of all information on collections of African cultural objects and research and for making this available worldwide by free access over the Internet, more than 100 international experts on cultural objects digitisation and research pointed out special considerations around the digitisation and research of cultural objects. In particular, they demand that African countries make decisions on the digitisation of information on collections and obtain copyright for it, since in their opinion, digital data will be of equal importance as the restitution of physical cultural objects.[37]

The situation of ethnographic collections in Africa

As African countries such as Mali, Nigeria, or Namibia have, for several decades, made requests for restitution to France, Great Britain and Germany, the report by Sarr and Savoy has prompted positive comments and generated high expectations by commentators in Africa.[5] Concrete results remain to be seen, even several months after Macron's announcement of a speedy return of 26 pieces to Benin.  However, some African curators also have reacted critically to one-sided European initiatives regarding restitutions. A curator of the National Museum of Tanzania, for example, said that first of all, African experts have to be involved. In view of the large number of African cultural objects in Europe and the lack of facilities in local museums, restitution may not always be a priority. Other African cultural experts have pointed to the ethnocentric Western nature of museums, which explains why they tend not to find much interest with local visitors in Africa. Another argument concerns the importance of cultural heritage in modern, globalized African societies. After all, most objects in ethnographic museums date back to historical cultures that no longer exist today.

It's time to repair our stolen identity. (...) But the masks and fetishes that are now stored in European museums—there would be no point in giving them back, because these pieces have no value for the Africans. They are empty, dead, de-souled—they have lost their original meaning because they are torn from their context and thus have become meaningless objects. Because they were not art objects, but religious, ritual, and magic objects. That's why they were so important to African societies back then.

— Charles Kayuka, Tanzania[38]

In their report, Sarr and Savoy have, however, already taken account of such differences. With regard to the consequences for national cultural policy in African states, Felwine Sarr said in an interview with a German newspaper:

We want to advise the African participants (on restitution efforts) to steer the discussion in their countries. There is already a place at the Museum for Black Civilizations in Dakar. The infrastructures vary across countries, but the museums as institutions are similar.

— Felwine Sarr[39]

References
  1. Felwine Sarr, Bénédicte Savoy: Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle. Paris 2018; The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics (Download French original and English version, pdf, http://restitutionreport2018.com/
  2. "Submission of the Savoy/Sarr report on the restitution of African heritage". elysee.fr (in French). Retrieved 2019-07-20.
  3. "Emmanuel Macron's speech at the University of Ouagadougou". elysee.fr (in French). Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  4. However, the legal status of such cultural heritage in France, where all public collections are considered inalienable property of the state, remains unresolved and will have to be changed, if Macron’s promise is to become reality.
  5. "Coordination of African Positions on Restitution Matters". Modern Ghana. Retrieved 2019-07-31.
  6. The report does not cover North African countries, whose cultures have been marked by indigenous populations such as the Berber ethnic groups and by Arab-Islamic influence.
  7. Boukari-Yabara, Amzat (2016). "Felwine Sarr. Afrotopia". Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  8. "Afrotopia or The Future is Open". Akademie Schloss Solitude. 2019-04-30. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  9. "Les Ateliers de la Pensée | Afrique | Sénégal". ateliersdelapensee. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  10. Savoy, Bénédicte (2003). Patrimoine annexé. Les biens culturels saisis par la France en Allemagne autour de 1800. Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l’homme / Coll. «Passages/Passagen» du Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art. ISBN 978-2735109883.
  11. "We are part of the solution, not the problem". Humboldt Forum. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  12. Sarr and Savoy, p. 115
  13. Felwine Sarr et Bénédicte Savoy: Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle. Paris 2018, p. 103–106
  14. "Le dialogue et la participation devront accompagner toutes les étappes de ces travaux". Sarr et Savoy, 2018, p. 104
  15. Speech held in Paris on June 7, 1978, available on the UNESCO website. See Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, “Pour le retour, a ceux qui l’ont crée, d’un patrimoine culturel irremplaçable”, Museum, vol. 31, no1, 1979, p. 58.
  16. Sarr and Savoy, p. 31
  17. Sarr and Savoy, p. 11
  18. Sarr and Savoy, p. 154-202
  19. Following the report, France pledged to finance a loan for a museum for the future restitution of objects from the Royal Court of Abomey in Benin. "Benin gets €20m loan for new museum to show restituted heritage".theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2019-07-21
  20. "Museums in the changing world order: Restitution to Africa reaches tipping point". theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  21. "The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage, Toward a New Relational Ethics'". Missing or empty |url= (help)
  22. Rykner, Didier (2019-07-27). "Emmanuel Macron met fin à l'inaliénabilité des collections publiques". La Tribune de l'Art (in French). Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  23. "Restitution report 2018". theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  24. "The Sarr-Savoy Report & Restituting Colonial Artifacts". Center for Art Law. 2019-01-31. Retrieved 2019-07-20.
  25. "France retreats from report recommending automatic restitutions of looted African artefacts". theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  26. As French historian Francis Simonis pointed out, the sabre of Hadj Omar Tall actually is not an African object, but a European weapon, made for the French Army in the 19th century and taken back to France from Ségou in the modern state of Mali.Simonis, Francis (2019-11-24). "La première œuvre qui est "restituée" à l'Afrique est un objet européen". Le Monde.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-07-17.
  27. "France takes first legal step towards restitutions to Benin and Senegal as cabinet examines new law". www.theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2020-07-17.
  28. Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com). "Looted colonial art: Is there the political will to return pilfered artifacts? | DW | 05.01.2019". DW.COM. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  29. "Culture ministers from 16 German states agree to repatriate artefacts looted in colonial era". theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  30. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu. "Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Museums & institutions - Ethnologisches Museum - Collection & research - Research - Tanzania–Germany: Shared Object Histories?". Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  31. Marshall, Alex (2018-12-08). "Belgium's Africa Museum Had a Racist Image. Can It Change That?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  32. "DR Congo to request restitution of works from former coloniser Belgium". theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2019-07-20.
  33. Koshy, Yohann (2018-12-04). "Hey, that's our stuff: Maasai tribespeople tackle Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  34. Among other reasons, the debates about art stolen during the Nazi era or from native American cultures had influenced this awareness.
  35. Scher, Robin (2019-06-11). "Better Safe Than Sorry: American Museums Take Measures Mindful of Repatriation of African Art". ARTnews. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
  36. See, for example, temporary exhibitions uniting important cultural heritage from Africa, and put together with enormous financial and personal resources, such as the Metropolitan Museum's exhibitions: https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2011/heroic-africans-legendary-leaders-iconic-sculptures
  37. Wallace, Andrea; Pavis, Mathilde (2019-03-25). "Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access Relevant to the Digitization and Restitution of African Cultural Heritage and Associated Materials". Rochester, NY. SSRN 3378200. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  38. "Tansania und die Kolonialzeit - Der afrikanische Blick". Deutschlandfunk Kultur (in German). Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  39. "Europa ist auf einem Auge blind". www.tagesspiegel.de (in German). Retrieved 2019-07-27.

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