Posted on 11/22/2018 4:42:42 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Experts appointed by President Emmanuel Macron will advise him on Friday to allow the return of thousands of African artworks held in French museums, a radical shift in policy which could put pressure on other former colonial powers.
Calls have been growing in Africa for the restitution of their cultural treasures, but French law strictly forbids the government from ceding state property, even in well-documented cases of pillaging.
But in a speech in Burkina Faso in November last year, Macron said "Africa's heritage cannot just be in European private collections and museums."
He later asked French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to study the matter, and they are to present Macron with their report on Friday.
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.
Of the estimated 90,000 African artworks in French museum collections, around 70,000 are at Paris' Quai Branly museum, created by ex-president Jacques Chirac, a keen admirer of African and Asian arts.
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.
Critics also say the move could prompt private French collectors to move their works out of the country for fear of seizure.
European conservationists have also raised practical concerns, worrying artefacts could be stolen or handled improperly if given to inexperienced museums in politically unstable countries.
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.fr ...
It’s ugly.
Tell Africa that any artifacts containing ivory must be destroyed and will not be returned to shame the continent for the continued practice of poaching.
PING
Seriously? Jar-Jar Binks and Admiral Akbar are modeled on African statues in a French museum?!?
Does Africa know how to do anything at all other than COMPLAIN..?
And Threepio in the middle!?!
AFRICAN treasures? Give them back.
The Local France: African *art*....you ARE sh!tting us, right?
My aunt has some African art. I find most of it unimaginative and unsightly. There are a couple of excellent carvings, but not one painting or mask I would consider looking at twice were I in the market. Even the weaves are banal.
I’m sure Italy would like the Mona Lisa back too and Greece the Venus de Milo.
And while they’re at it, they can return all the Africans to Africa.
One of my favorite pieces of African art when I was a kid was a cast iron coin bank in the form of an African male head with a hand that you put the coin into and, when you pushed the lever on the side, the hand pivoted and the coin was deposited between the head’s substantial lips. And someone once gave my parents a replica sculpture of an African woman with an elongated neck with coiled metal around it, huge ears with metal inserts to elongate them, and huge lips. The wood looked like ebony. Similar to the fretboard on my favorite old Gibson guitar. I think that the coin bank was a replica since the real original ones are now worth good money. There’s collectors for about anything these days. I’d even bet somewhere in the USA (probably in the south) there’s got to be a lawn jockey museum.
France would be better off keeping the art and getting rid of Macron.
If they were smart they would give those pieces to their “invaders” and send them back along with the “art”.
It all looks like the stuff your kid makes in school and then brings home. Not exactly high art.
Greece the Venus de Milo.
What do you expect from a continent where 95% of the people still live in mud and cow sh!t huts?
You know the lawn jockey was originally white? No joke.
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