147
“Every object has its own history, which it would
be judicious to understand and evaluate before
the definitive measures this report recommends
are implemented. Clearly this is the reasonable
approach, and it is one that Germany
appears to be adopting.
the menus with them too, since archives, films,
sound recordings, and photographs in the public
museum’s collections will also be up for grabs.
Savoy assures us that “this is not about emptying
the French museums.” We have no doubt that she
is correct on this point, since African curators certainly
will not want to encumber themselves with
the spear points, old shoes, pottery shards, straw
hats, and other bric-a-brac that represent the larger
part of the corpus of African objects in French
institutions. The cultural authorities in Dakar will
discover that what they have been asking for sight
unseen are the very meager contents of the Quai
Branly’s Senegalese collection. This consists mostly
of utilitarian objects for which the Musée Théodore
Monod in Dakar already has duplicate examples
that it inherited from the Musée Colonial de
l’IFAN, which, according to Professor Abdou
Sylla, a researcher at Cheikh Anta Diop
University, consisted of 26,000 pieces in
1984. Only the superb lyre stone, a 3.8-ton
bifurcated megalith from the Kaffrine region,
would represent a worthwhile prize
for that country, assuming one could possibly
extract it from the floor of the Parisian
museum in which it is permanently installed.
On the other hand, Agence France-Presse informs
us that “Côte d’Ivoire has formulated a
list of about a hundred masterpieces” that it deems
must be restituted. If the curator of the Musée des
Civilisations de Côte d’Ivoire, which actually is laying
claim to a collection that numbers some 15,000
pieces, has done her job with discernment, then the
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac will have
been completely emptied of its most remarkable
works.
Every object has its own history,
which it would be judicious to understand
and evaluate before the
definitive measures this report
recommends are implemented.
Clearly this is the reasonable approach,
and it is one that Germany
appears to be adopting. France
would do well to let this method of
dealing with the issue serve as a model
before it puts the destiny of its multicultural collections
into the hands of other countries.
“
RIGHT: Cartoon by John Graham, 2019.
© John Graham, Melbourne.
RESTITUTION