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The Senegalese Minister of Culture on Tuesday urged France to return all Senegalese art works following a French report calling for the return of the treasures of African art.
The recommendations of the report of French and African experts, commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and published last week, could potentially affect tens of thousands of works acquired during the French colonization of sub-Saharan Africa .
The Minister of Culture of the former French colony, Senegal, said his country was ready to work with France to find a solution, but they are seeking full restitution.
"If you have 10,000 pieces of art (identified from Senegal), we want to have 10,000," Abdou Latif Coulibaly told reporters.
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Coulibaly commented on Senegalese art during a presentation on the new "cultural jewel" of Dakar, the Museum of Black Civilizations (CMN), to be inaugurated on December 6th.
The museum "has everything you want," added its director Hamady Bocoum at the press conference.
It contains remnants of the first hominids that appeared in Africa several million years ago, as well as the most recent contemporary art works in collections of paintings and sculptures.
The museum was built with a gift from China of about 20 billion CFA francs (30.5 million euros, 34.6 million dollars), Coulibaly told AFP.
The architecture was inspired by African round huts, especially those in the Casamance region of southern Senegal, said Bocoum.
The idea of a museum showcasing the civilizations of black Africa was originally proposed by the late Senegalese poet president Leopold Sedar Senghor at a world festival of black artists in Dakar in 1966.
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