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..?
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.
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.
The “art” probably came with a curse. Getting rid of them might help. France has been on a downward trajectory for a century.
“European conservationists have also raised practical concerns, worrying artefacts could be stolen or handled improperly if given to inexperienced museums in politically unstable countries.”
Hmm. So these elite Euros think that the Africans can’t take care of their own artwork. How gauche and UN-PC. Shades of Kipling’s “White man’s burden”.
A lot of the stuff being sold today as “African art” is actually made in China.
Preserved only to be sent where they will disappear into warlord (or their ilk) homes and/or be trashed.
Sooo... just another shakedown attempt along the lines of “shame and collect”.
They will all mostly be destroyed or stolen within 5 years. Either by the corrupt government themselves, or the incompetent government allowing it to happen.
No
It’ll be lost in the morass of kleptocrats and cannibals with fancy uniforms
This really is something whites do better
Preserving art and antiquities