After a Year of Inaction, France Commits to Returning 26 Looted Artifacts to Benin by 2021

France says it will return 26
artworks looted from Benin during the colonial era by 2021 at the
latest. The French president
Emmanuel Macron had
pledged to repatriate the items “without delay” a year ago, hot on
heels of a radical report urging the return of looted African
heritage in French museums. The announcement comes as some African
experts feared that he was not going to keep his word.

The artifacts, which include a
royal throne, and sculptures of the kings of Abomey, as well as a
statue of the god Gou, will be returned “in the course of 2020, perhaps at the beginning
of 2021,” the French culture
minister Franck Riester told Benin’s president Patrice Talon
yesterday, December 16. The firm deadline was announced by the
French politician during his visit to the West African
country.

The 26 Benin artifacts were
looted after a bloody siege of the Béhanzin palaces by the French
in 1892. The objects are now
in the collection of the the Musée du Quai Branly –
Jacques Chirac. The ethnography museum in Paris holds around
70,000 objects from sub-Saharan
Africa. Artnet News reached out to the French culture ministry and
the museum but did not immediately hear back.

Once returned to Benin, the
works are due to be housed in a new museum built with French
support. Some experts in Benin have warned against sending the
objects back before the country can build a proper facility to
preserve them, according to AFP.

Benin’s culture minister
Jean-Michel Abimbola welcomed France’s renewed commitment to return
the artifacts. Speaking during a joint press
conference, he praised “the opening of a broader discussion” about
restitution. The two countries also clarified that they had agreed
that the works would be returned in stages.

Prior to the announcement, the French government and museum
directors appeared to be dragging their feet. A promised inventory
of African objects in its national collections has not been
published, and a symposium of politicians and museum professionals
due to be held in early 2019 has not taken place. This has caused
some museum professionals in Africa, such Patrick Mudekereza, the
director of Waza Centre d’art de Lubumbashi in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, to doubt the French commitment to restitution.
Mudekereza told Artnet News last week that he feels Macron is “not
keeping his word.”

Macron’s dramatic intervention
into the issue of looted African heritage began in 2017, and the
expert report he commissioned galvanized the
conversation among politicians and museum professionals beyond
France. It has also put
particular pressure on museums in other former colonial powers,
including the UK, Germany, and Belgium, to follow suit.

The British Museum, which is a
member of the Benin Dialogue Group, along with other UK
institutions, prefers possible long-term loans to Africa rather
than no-strings repatriation of looted artifacts. Most of its Benin
treasures were looted by the British army from Benin City, which is
now in Nigeria. Last month, Jesus College, which is part of the
University of Cambridge, announced it would be repatriating a Benin
bronze of a cockerel.

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Returning 26 Looted Artifacts to Benin by 2021 appeared first
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