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Scholars call for return of African objects in western museums
Author: University Museum
Published: 20/05/2022

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Scholars call for return of African objects in western museums

Restitution – the return of lost or stolen items to a rightful owner – was at the centre of a discussion entitled African museums: The question of the museum and the national hosted by the Stellenbosch University Museum on 12 May.

During the talk, which was hosted on Microsoft Teams, western museums with African artefacts and artworks on display or in storage were likened to crime scenes. Scholars called on archives at these museums to be opened, and for the artefacts and artworks to be returned to their country of origin.

A key point was put to the panel hosting the discussion by Malik Al Nasir, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of History of the University of Cambridge. “We don't know what is in these museums here in the west," said Al Nasir, speaking from the United Kingdom. “And it is essentially a crime scene because they were built on slavery and colonialism. And many of us in the diaspora are denied our history in their archives.

“They [museum curators in the west] decide what gets researched, what gets indexed, what gets catalogued, what gets displayed. And many, many of the things associated with our history through slavery and colonialism are completely and utterly ignored. Many of them aren't even catalogued. In order for this to change, we need to be able to send our own people into those archives – because the conversation around reparation and restitution can only occur based on what we know they have."

One of three panellists joining the conversation – Ciraj Rassool, Senior Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape – responded: “You are absolutely correct. We must engage with these museums through confrontation, through collegiality, through becoming experts on their collections and helping them through their debates. One of the most important things [is that] we need to enter into alliances with activists on that side. Activists in Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, in Germany. We need to know who our comrades are. Because this is about building an international movement that is going to give birth to a new museology."

Rassool is a principal investigator for the international project, Action for African Cultural Restitution (AARC), which involves museums and restitution. He added: “There is no single model of how we can do restitution. There are some museums in Britain that are further ahead in their thinking. Some museums in Scotland, […] smaller museums, have shown their willingness to do restitution. There are even reparations that have been paid. So it is possible.

“But by and large, the UK [United Kingdom] is extremely recalcitrant. You know, me as a museum scholar, I wasn't able to go to Britain to see the big Oceania exhibition, an important moment in the field of transforming museums. Unfortunately I didn't have a visa. And a UK visa is usually expensive and extremely complicated to get. We are constantly negotiating our mobility to be able to participate in these issues."

Also on the panel was Kenyan archaeologist and heritage expert Professor George Abungu, former director of the National Museums of Kenya.

“At some stage, maybe we should not intellectualise so much the issue of restitution, but probably just practicalise it," said Abungu. “I don't think that we should help the west by questioning where we are going to take this heritage. Whether we throw it in the ocean, that's our own problem. Whether we take it back in the forest and bury it, that's our own problem. And the reason I'm saying this is because these things were not taken as donations. They were taken under very ruthless and very vicious conditions. Including during the slave trade, during colonialism. It was exploitation."

Abungu stressed that not only museum archives, but all archives in the west, should be opened up.

“I think we should take back this material, not just for emotional reasons," he said. “Some of these materials will have the power to inspire our artists to be creators. People like Picasso were inspired by African art. Why can't we bring these things onto the continent, to inspire Africans in Africa?

“To inspire them to be creative, to work with this material, to [enter into] dialogue with this material, to create new creations through these materials. And to make money for our people who … are still living in abject poverty because of slavery and colonialism. So I think that we need to think beyond just feeling good and happy about taking these items back. We need to really see what we can get out of this material as part of [the] inspiration of a new generation."

Speaking from Tufts University in Massachusetts in the United States, the third panellist, History of Art and Architecture Professor Peter Probst, referred to French President Emmanuel Macron's famous 2017 speech in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. In the speech, Macron bemoaned the fact that much of Africa's cultural heritage is held by European collectors and museums, and called for it to be returned to Africa. “The theme of repatriation and restitution has been going on for decades. But here it got a new immediacy," said Probst.

Reflecting on how museums in Africa came about, Abungu said that, for the most, they were founded by colonialists to serve colonial interests. Subsequently, walls had to be broken down after independence to make room for an African way of thinking.

Abungu said changes at the National Museums of Kenya – currently with 1 050 members of staff with a total of 80 PhDs between them – started in the 1990s.

“And so many museums in Africa were basically transit points where materials collected from Africa were stored, while the best materials were taken across to the north, particularly to the west. Of course, the new governments decided at independence that they wanted to make the museums national so that they could create a nation through the museum. The plan was for museums to deal with the issues affecting the people of the nation – for example, issues of conflict resolution."

Rassool added that the question of a national museum was important. “It is something that we have to counterpose against what we can only think of as 'the state museum'", he said. “New national museums need to be created out of old, divided, segregated, colonial collections …"