President Emanuel Macron said on November 23 that France will return 26 works of art to Benin after 136 years of colonial pillage. French art historian Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese writer and economist Felwine Sarr have written a report which underlines how these materials were acquired. Most of them were the products of theft, looting and for some acquired by forced consent.
On November23 2018 Mark Horton, Professor in Archaeology at the University of Bristol in an article published in the Conversation echoed this restitution but in doing so he pointed out some real problems raised by this decision.
The very idea of restitution took place in the aftermath of the second world war when many pieces of art were stolen by the Nazis and their right owners sought to get them back.
Mark Horton underlines how glad he is to benefit from the convinience of access provided by Western museums for his researches while, at the same time, deploring that his African colleagues are deprived of the possibility to see artefacts from their own countries.
When brought to the West these objects were supposed to be preserved for futures generations. A fallacious argument, indeed, based on the misguided idea that African countries are unable to take care of their own cultural heritage.
But if the idea of a restitution is a fair one how will it be made concrete? Many of these countries, as Mark Horton highlights it don't have the structure to take care of these artefacts. They don't have museums secure enough to display such valuable objects (the aftermath of colonialism e.g their shattered economy didn't enable those countries to put the creation of new museums on their agenda). Not to mention the devices to control heat and damp in the exhibition rooms and the cost of training the right staff in order to guard them properly. The current "state of affairs"can be viewed again as a specious argument to keep them in the Western world where everything is "under control".
We can't give artefacts back without creating a system which helps African countries not only to build decent museums but to ensure their functioning. Are Western countries prepared to do this and fund that kind of enterprise? It is an uncertain and costly enterprise that can be badly resented by ex dominated countries which are always struggling to fight for their own identity and get rid of any foreign intervention in their culture.
So wouldn't it be possible to collect those works of art and put them in specially built museums which will have the status of extraterritoriality under the authority of UNESCO for example? Or museums which would have the same status of the free port in Geneva?
Thus, all these artefacts which were stolen rather than acquired will benefit from special status which temporarily calms things down.
The problem is in fact huge!
What would happen to main Western museums if artefacts are returned to their original countries? Wouldn't they be totally emptied of their content?
The newly built Museum of Quay Branly may be reduced to nothing.
The problem is even worse when artefacts come from countries that are unstable such as Syria or any country at war. Artefacts can't stay there but where are they supposed to go? Sometimes they are stolen (if not destroyed) and feed an international traffic or even worse they may be used by terrorists to make money.
Shouldn't we simply reconsider the place of art in one's society and the way it is displayed.
As a matter of fact we can make a parallel between natural history museums and old-style zoos where animals are kept behind bars so we can glance at them and move on...
Endangered species are now kept in Western zoos (but are they still the original species?), ancient works of art are kept in museums in the same manner. We pass by and admire them (but are they still comprehensible in this odd Western environment?
As shocking this comparison may be, it seems nevertheless accurate.
Can thus both institutions have a higher purpose in a world where economic issues are prevailing?
But then (let's put it in an ironical way!) isn't art somewhere in between the real market (Sotheby's auctions), parallel market (works of art coming from unstable countries), and the secondary market (works of art aren't quoted on the stock market)?!!