Page 55 - Bulletin, Vol.78 No.2, June 2019

WILL YOU SEE THE MUSEUMS EMPTY OF ALL THE

COLLECTIONS?

I must say that this option would hurt me a lot. It is so interesting to see works from
different countries exposed side by side. A big congratulation to Senegal for its initiative
to reconnect with its past.

I understand, however, that some works were stolen during colonization, during wars,
sometimes under cover of good feelings, sometimes with the idea that only Europeans
were worthy of appreciating art, sometimes even more slyly to belittle the culture of the
colonized countries.

If we take again the definition of WIKIPEDIA one is alas well in this approach. What are
the first, not to say primitive, arts?

Jacques Kerchache, an art dealer and specialist in African art, tried in the early 1990s to
bring the "first arts" to the Louvre. In 1990, he signed in the newspaper Libération an
article on this subject and then meets Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris. The latter,
who is said to be passionate about the "first arts", was elected President of the Republic
in 1995. Upon his arrival at the head of the State, he asked for the opening of a first arts
department at the Musée du Louvre. A year later, he announced the project to create a
new museum, which quickly met with internal opposition, followed in 1999 by a strike by
agents of the Musée de l'Homme, who challenged the dismantling of its collections and
criticized the primacy of aesthetic choice at the expense of scientific considerations.
Indeed, the collections of the National Museum of Arts of Africa and Oceania (OMAF),
closed in 2003, are also intended to be transferred from the Palais de la porte dorée.

It will be very difficult, however, to return the treasures of the Incas
as the gold was melted thus causing the disappearance a whole civilization forever.

But let's go back a bit to the problem of returning all works to their country of origin. It
would also be to forget that many of them have thus been preserved from looting for
private purposes, wars, sometimes discovered buried in forests for centuries ... This
often seems a false pretext for the theft of cultural objects. This was the case, for
example, with the Parthenon frieze, still claimed today by Greece from the British
Museum.

Does this mean that the works discovered belong to the discoverer? Egypt, for example,
has established a strict policy on archaeological excavations and the artefacts remain in
the country. International rules have been promulgated by UNESCO (UNIDROIT in

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