123 FIG. 1 (far left): Michel Leveau in front of a street sign pointing to the Musée Dapper. © Musée Dapper archives. FIG. 2 (left): Statue depicting King Glèlè. Kingdom of Danhomè, Republic of Benin. Brass. H: 105 cm. Created before 1889, presumably by Huntondji Ganhu and part of the “treasure of King Béhanzin.” Ex Achille Lemoine; Charles Ratton, after 1926. Musée Dapper, Paris, inv. 2541. FIG. 3 (right): Reliquary fi gure, eyema byeri, known as the”Pahouin Venus.” Fang, Gabon or Equatorial Guinea. Wood, pigment. H: 56 cm. Ex Georges de Miré; Louis Carré, by 1931; Jacob Epstein; Carlo Monzino. Musée Dapper, Paris, inv. 2891. Tribal Art Magazine: Michel Leveau devoted a major part of his life to promoting appreciation for African art. What motivated his commitment? Christiane Falgayrettes-Leveau: Michel Leveau discovered African art quite early on through his professional life. He was a mining engineer and worked in a number of countries, including Mali, Senegal, and Gabon. He quickly became aware of the importance of the local cultures’ artistic patrimonies and of the need to preserve the aesthetic qualities of these. That was the impetus for his beginning to collect traditional art. He began to acquire important works and did so consistently, although he never thought of himself as a collector. His motivation was entirely different —his purchases were not meant to satisfy a personal need but rather were rooted in a desire to share and to present a patrimony with the public at large. He fi rst did this by supporting researchers and the publication of monographs. The creation of a space where the collection could be shown to a large audience was a project that came years later. T. A. M.: How did the idea of a museum come about? C. F.-L.: As I just mentioned, Michel Leveau’s intent was to encourage the development of a new way of seeing art that had too often been perceived (both in the West and in Africa, by the way) as being part of daily life and thus of an ethnographic nature. For him, sponsoring research—and remember that he was a scholar as well as an art patron —contributed to assuring that traditional works would become part of the universal pantheon of the arts. Needless to say, his approach was innovative at the time, which was more than thirty years ago. By then there had been a few exhibitions that had emphasized the aesthetic qualities of the art, most notably Chefs-d’oeuvre du musée de l’Homme (Masterpieces in the Musée de l’Homme), which had been organized by the Société des Amis du Musée de l’Homme in 1965, but an ethnographic approach to these artworks was still prevalent. Within this context, Michel Leveau began to think in terms of creating a museum, although he initially wanted to open it in Africa. The question of where to put it quickly arose. Should it be in Senegal or in Gabon, just to mention the countries he knew well? However, he soon became aware of other problems, such as the absence of suitable museum venues (save for in Nigeria and South Africa) and of the diffi culties that Samuel Sidibé, director of the National Museum of Mali in Bamako, had encountered due to political events. He ultimately came to realize that Africa had more urgent needs and priorities than aesthetic
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