Art lessons: Why France is giving back their cultural treasures

Nearly half a million items, an estimated 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's cultural heritage, are held – mostly in museum cellars – outside the continent. A debate over what to do with all of these artifacts has been convening in recent years, as forming colonial powers to reconsider their history. French President Emmanuel Macron has broken with decades of tradition and ordered the return of ancient royal items to Benin and challenged museums to give back items taken without countries' consent. "The global rise of identity politics and nationalism has fed the argument," says Tom Flynn, an art historian. On the side, he sees "those who make a cultural," "such as tribal masks in Nigeria" or "marble sculptures taken from the Parthenon in Athens," now on show in the British Museum . On the other side are major national museums whose collections "are bound up with national identity," Mr. Flynn says. "To diminish them" by returning items "is seen as diminishing the national past." Mr. Macron has taken a different approach, breaking with decades of traditional policy. "African cultural heritage can not longer remain a prisoner of European museums," he tweeted.

Paris

In the face of a swelling chorus of demands from Africa and elsewhere, President Emmanuel Macron has challenged museums around the world to return to the cultural treasures to which they were taken without consent in colonial times.

Last Friday he has been backing up to an expert report calling for the repatriation of such African artifacts from French collections, and ordered the return of 26 ancient royal items that Benin has requested. His move has shaken up an international debate about what museums should do today with the facts acquired in the past few years – even if some high-profile New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art suggests slow shifting thinking on the matter .

Tristram Besterman, head of the UK Museums Association Ethics Committee, said: "To be a leader in the world of cultural heritage," said Tristram Besterman.

Last week the governor of Easter Island visited London to ask the British Museum to return one of the Pacific island's totemic statues, plundered in 1868 by a British naval vessel. "We are just the body. You, the England people, have our soul, "said Tarita Alarcón Rapu, fighting back tears.

Museum authorities made no return, or loan, the statue.

Nearly half a million items, an estimated 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's cultural heritage, are currently held – mostly in museum cellars – outside the continent. A debate over what to do with all of these artifacts has been convening in recent years, as forming colonial powers to reconsider their history.

"I belong to a generation of French people for the crimes of European colonization are undeniable," Mr. Macron told an audience of Burkina Faso students in last year.

At the same time, says Tom Flynn, an art historian who writes on cultural heritage issues. On the side, he sees "those who make a cultural," "such as tribal masks in Nigeria" or "marble sculptures taken from the Parthenon in Athens," now on show in the British Museum .

On the other side are major national museums whose collections "are bound up with national identity," Mr. Flynn says. "To diminish them" by returning items "is seen as diminishing the national past."

In Britain, where 40 percent of citizens are proud of Britain's colonial history, according to a 2016 YouGov poll, that argument carries weight.

Macron has taken a different approach, breaking with decades of traditional policy. In his Burkina Faso speech, he declared that he wanted "to see the conditions put in place so as to allow for the temporary or final restitution of African cultural heritage to Africa."

"African cultural heritage can not longer remain a prisoner of European museums," he tweeted.

The two experts he commissioned to report on the issue presented their findings on Friday. They called for the "restitution in a swift and thorough way … of any objects taken by force or presumed to be achieved through inequitable conditions" from Africa.

Macron clearly hopes to form colonial powers will take note. The presidential spokeswoman Selen Daver said: "The idea is to encourage other countries to explore how they can contribute to this dynamic. Macron will be prepared for a conference of European and African countries to start a new relationship and a policy of exchange together.

Items returned in the past: Italy handed back an obelisk taken from Ethiopia in the 1930s, and France returned to South Korea 300 manuscripts stolen from a royal library by marauding French troops in 1866, for example.

But often such restitutions have occurred only after "painful struggles," the new French report points out. And in many museums, officials are still deeply reluctant to accept the arguments of source communities.

Even the British law allows the return of Nazi-looted artworks to their "descendants" owners passed to the teeth of opposition from the national museums, "recalls Mr. Besterman.

"One of the prerequisites of being named director of a big UK museum," says Flynn.

Recently, though, there have been signs of movement, however hesitant. "Hartmut Dorgerloh, Head of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, responding to the French report," The debate on how to treat this important aspect of the colonial heritage is over.

"Looted art must always be returned," he added.

The United States has returned more than 8,000 stolen artifacts – from paintings to fossils – to 30 countries since 2007, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One high-profile example of repatriation came in 2017, when the Hobby Lobby chain store returned 5,500 illegally smuggled artifacts, including ancient cuneiform clay tablets, to Iraq.

At the Royal Museum for Central Africa outside Brussels, director of Guido Gryseels, who has been in his care in the Congo, in a recent interview with The World newspaper that "Africa is a continent that was pillaged, emptied. We can not ignore this subject and we have to find solutions. "

Amongst the solutions that the French government is promoting the restitution, which will require changes to the law, are traveling exhibitions, exchanges, and loans.

Earlier this year the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, London, England, an abyssinian imperial stronghold, in 1868, but nothing has yet come of that idea .

And last month, major European museums agreed to lend contested artifacts, including some famous bronzes, to a new museum in Nigeria that they will help to build.

But loans, but extended, do not fulfill the cultural needs of their artifacts, says Besterman, the former museum ethicist.

"What you are really talking about is repatriating authority and dignity of a community to make their voice heard," he says. "For too long, big museums have had their fingers in their ears."

But that is not last, Mnyaka Susuru Mboro predicts, has Berlin-based activist from Tanzania. Around Europe, he says, museums "are just waiting to see where France is headed.

"They'll have to react," he says. "They'll have to take some action."