[MSN] DOES THE DEMAND FOR THE RESTITUTION OF STOLEN AFRICAN CULTURAL OBJECTS CONSTITUTE AN OBSTACLE TO THE DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT AFRICAN ARTS? COMMENTS ON A LETTER FROM PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, DIRECTOR, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.

[MSN]

DOES THE DEMAND FOR THE RESTITUTION OF STOLEN AFRICAN CULTURAL OBJECTS
CONSTITUTE AN OBSTACLE TO THE DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT AFRICAN ARTS?
COMMENTS ON A LETTER FROM PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, DIRECTOR, THE METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.

   Reference is made to the letter from Philippe de Montebello, Director of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1), New York, which was published in
AFRIKANET on Friday, 18 April, 2008. http://www.afrikanet.info/. 

In his letter, Philippe de Montebello refers to my article entitled “Is
Legality still a viable concept for European and American Museum Directors?”
http://www.afrikanet.info/index. 

The Director of the Metropolitan does not address the main point of my
article, namely, that the arguments the European and American museums
present in defense of their holding of stolen African cultural objects are
extremely weak. It seems the director is more interested in the picture
inserted in the article than in the serious comments on legality. I shall
therefore only comment on the points raised in his letter.

   We are sorry that the Director of the Metropolitan Museum had to go to so
much trouble in order to identify the Nok terracotta. Incidentally, why must
a Nok sculpture be described as “haunting, strange-looking object”? This
description comes from a museum director who has artworks from the
Egyptians, Guro, Lobi, Dogon, Bamana, Senufo, Baule, Lumbo, Igbo, Fan
Yoruba, Chokwe, etc among his collections. I thought we had long moved away
from the period when the Europeans and Americans described whatever came out
of Africa in these terms. Or are we going back to those days when an
unbridgeable difference was assumed to exist between African art and
European art? Surely, after the influence of African art on modern art and
after so many exhibitions on African art, some organized by the Metropolitan
Museum, such a description sounds somewhat odd, especially coming from a
Director of one of the leading museums of the West.

   The “haunting, strange-looking object” which the director could not
identify is one of the three terracotta pieces which were bought by the
French and kept in the Louvre (another “universal museum”) even though the
objects were on the Red List of ICOM (International Council of Museums)
which contains a list of items which are forbidden to be exported. (See
Annex 1 below). This fact was known to the French but they did not care for
the rules and it took the intervention of ICOM to bring the matter to
discussion and to the embarrassment of the French who had bought the pieces
in 1999 for the planned museum, Musée du Quai Branly. (2) Finally, France
acknowledged the ownership of Nigeria in those pieces and signed an
agreement by which Nigeria loaned the pieces to France for a period of
twenty-five years (renewable). Did Montebello never hear of this story? 

   That the Metropolitan Museum does not own a Nok or Ife object should not
lead to the conclusion by the Director of the Metropolitan Museum that
“Nigeria seemed to have produced no art before the much later Benin period,
well represented at the Metropolitan Museum”. Is the premise of this
conclusion that what does not exist in the Metropolitan Museum does not
exist and cannot exist? Montebello himself has said in his second paragraph
that he “also discovered that more than 2000 years ago as well an Ife
culture in Nigeria produced sculpture”. 

First a discovery of Ife and then a conclusion that nothing existed before
Benin? Attention may be drawn to the information on Nok Terracotta issued in
2000 by the Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Timeline of Art History
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nok/hd_nok.htm  (October 2000) (ANNEX 2)
The note refers to an image from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. 

That image depicts a Nok figure of a seated dignitary the features of which
are very similar to those of the image the Director of the Metropolitan
Museum could not easily identify. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts note
states that: “A few of the remarkable characteristics that distinguish Nok
pieces from terracottas of later cultures in Nigeria include the triangular,
pierced eyes; the elaborate coiffure and beard; and the placement of the
ears.” http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?v=12&id=5368

   If the export of Nok or Ife objects from Nigeria is strictly forbidden,
it is among other reasons, to preserve them in their original setting so
that archaeologists can study them before the plunderers get their hands on
them and sell them to the museums of the West. The Director of the
Metropolitan Museum surely knows that these objects are also on the Red List
of ICOM.

   If the Metropolitan Museum has not been able to convince the Government
of Nigeria to loan one object of each of the great cultures of Nigeria,
there must be some reason which must have been explained by the Nigerian
authorities. One cannot comment on this point without first studying the
relevant correspondence.

   The statement that “Dr. Opoku believes all Nok, Ife, and Benin pieces
outside of Nigeria should be returned to Nigeria; that all works produced on
its territory should remain there“ is surely incorrect and the maker of the
statement knows it. As a person of culture who has spent a considerable part
of my life visiting various museums all over the world, I reject very
strongly this statement. It is an attempt to attribute to me an extreme
position which can be easily dismissed instead of dealing with the serious
arguments presented in detail (some would even say too much detail) in my
various articles which are freely available on the internet.

a) I have not been concerned in my articles with all Nok, Ife and Benin
pieces. I have been concerned mainly with those pieces of African culture
which have been stolen, looted, illegally exported or which have dubious
provenance and are in museums and their depots in Europe and America. We
have not addressed the issue of private ownership. We also believe that some
pieces may have been legally and legitimately acquired. The museum directors
may wish to throw all in one basket in order to build up a better defence.
That is their choice of strategy but this amalgam is neither honest nor very
helpful.

b) Those objects which have archival or religious or ritual significance
will have to be returned to the countries or communities of origin.

c) Those museums that are holding a large quantity of Benin pieces, British
Museum, 700, Ethnological Museum, Berlin, 600, should return some of these
to Nigeria. “Some” in my understanding does not mean “all”. The nightmare of
the museum director of waking up one morning and finding that all the
African pieces in his museum have disappeared has no foundation in reality
but is a fiction of his troubled imagination.

d) The museums holding illegally acquired Nigerian cultural objects will
have to acknowledge Nigerian ownership in these objects.

e) The Director of the Metropolitan Museum knows that there are many
sculptures from Nok, Ife and Benin outside of Nigeria and in the West, if
not in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Those interested in African art have
already enough information at their disposal in the various museums and in
various books, such as Philippe de Montebello said he consulted. There is no
danger of these civilizations becoming unknown.

f) Philippe de Montebello writes about the importance of people seeing these
objects in the museums. This is true but equally important, if not more
important, is the need of the peoples of the countries of origin to have
access to these objects in their own countries. The American or the British
may widen his knowledge about the world in seeing African sculptures in the
museums but do Africans not have any need also to learn about their own
culture and the cultures of others?

g) We are all interested in cultural objects being accessible to others but
this must be done on fair and equal basis and definitely not to the
detriment of the countries/communities of origin.

h) If Philippe de Montebello cannot identify Nok sculpture as he appears to
be saying, how then will he negotiate and correspond with the Nigerian
authorities? Is he seriously saying he can only recognize pieces from the
cultures represented in his museum?

i) Those interested in my views on the question of the restitution of
African cultural objects may wish to read my articles which are easily
available at AFRIKANET and elsewhere on the internet.

j) We should try to make it possible for all peoples to view objects from
all cultures and not only those in the Euro-American world. So far when
Western museum directors speak of mankind, they have only meant their kind.
When are they going to start thinking about sending some European
masterpieces to African museums so that Africans can also assess what
Europeans have been able to achieve? They could send to Accra, Kumasi,
Lagos, Abuja, Bamako, Cape Town, Dakar and Yaounde some Arcimboldo, Braque,
Botticelli, Bourgeois, Bernini, Cézanne, Chagall, Courbet, Dürer, Dali,
Gaugin, Giorgione, Klee, Klimt, Manet, Monet, Munch, Miró, Nolde, Picasso,
Pollock, Raffael, Rembrandt, Rodin, Schiele, Tizian, Van Dyck, Warhol, etc.
Or should it always be a one-way traffic?

   As most readers will recall, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, was one of the signatories of the so-called Declaration on
the Importance and Value of the Universal Museums (2002) by which the
largest museums- Louvre Museum, Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, State Museums, Berlin, Solomon
Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York and others-tried to secure for themselves immunity
against the growing claims for the restitution of stolen art objects in
their museums and also alleged that stolen objects which had been in their
museums for a very long time have become part of the cultures of the
countries where they are located. Though the British Museum was the
instigator of the initiative which was aimed at countering the growing
political pressure of Greece for the restitution of the Parthenon/Elgin
Marbles, the BM cunningly did not sign it. 

To explain and make explicit the assumptions and insinuations of the
champions of the so-called “universal museums” implicit in the letter of
Philippe de Montebello would take another article. The reader is therefore
advised to consult the following excellent articles: Mark O’Neill,
“Enlightenment Museums - universal or merely global”
http://www.elginism.com/20071012/826/; Tom Flynn, “The Universal Museum – a
valid model for the 21 century?” (http://www.tomflynn.co.uk/)

   It should also be added, though this may not mean much to some European
and American museum directors, it is not simply a question of wanting or not
to return cultural objects. There are laws and rules governing these
matters. The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and
Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural
Property as well as the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally
Exported Cultural Objects contain provisions which relate to restitution.
Various United Nations and UNESCO resolutions deal with the question of
restitution and the need to return cultural objects to their countries or
communities of origin. We have also had various conferences, such as, the
recent UNESCO International Conference, The Return of Cultural Property to
its Countries of Origin, 17-18 March, 2008, Athens, which urged museums to
initiate dialogues on the return of important cultural property to the
country and community of origin. Most legal systems have provisions relating
to unlawful acquisition of property which are also relevant. The ICOM Code
of Ethics contains provisions on the acquisition of objects by museums and
on restitution (http://icom.museum/ethics.html.) It is therefore not only a
question of will but also of law.

   We have written articles to urge the restitution of stolen cultural
objects. Philippe de Montebello, whilst rejoicing in the possession of Benin
objects (including one of the two Idia ivory hip masks, the symbol of
FESTAC), by his museum, the Metroplolitan Museum of Art, New York, complains
about his inability to persuade the Nigerian Government to provide his
museum with Nok and Ife objects he knows are on the Red List of ICOM and
therefore illegal to export. He does not say a word about restitution.
Clearly the epistemological revolution which is required if the large
museums are to play a truly universal role is neither for today nor for
tomorrow. Philippe de Montebello sees the world only from the vantage point
of those in New York or London.

“Whether the signatories to the declaration considered how their joint
utterance might be received by the international cultural community, or the
extent to which it might polarise museum professionals remains unclear.
However, it is hard to see how a potentially divisive and provocative policy
document could have been constructed with such scant disregard for the
broader museum community, which was not consulted.” Tom Flynn on the
Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, “The Universal
Museum – a valid model for the 21 century?” (http://www.tomflynn.co.uk/)

Kwame Opoku 20 April, 2008.



NOTES

(1) The Metropolitan Museum is described in its own press release of 8
January, 2008 http://www.metmuseum.org/press_room/7D as follows:
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest museum in the Western
Hemisphere, and the world's most encyclopedic art museum under one roof.
Founded in 1870, its permanent collections, housed in 17 curatorial
departments, embrace more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years
of world culture, from prehistory to the present, from every part of the
globe, in all artistic media, and at the highest levels of creative
excellence.”
(2)
http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/projects/iarc/culturewithoutcontext/issue10/ne
ws.htm

K.Opoku, “Benin to Quai Branly: A Museum for the Arts of the Others or for
the Stolen Arts of the Others?” http://www.museum-security.org/wordpress/ 

http://www.kmtspace.com/nok.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nok

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/1790882.stm

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F06E7DE113AF936A15752C1A9669
C8B63

http://hum.lss.wisc.edu/hjdrewal/Nok.html

Bernard Dupaigne, Le Scandale des arts premiers: la véritable histoire du
musée du quai Branly. Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2006.
For those who need an excellent introduction to Nok culture, one can
recommend, The Nok Culture - Art in Nigeria 2500 years ago by Gert Chesi and
Gerhard Meerzeder, Prestel, Munich, Berlin, London, New York,2006.


ANNEX. 1
ICOM RED LIST


The looting of archaeological items and the destruction of archaeological
sites in Africa are a cause of irreparable damage to African history and
hence to the history of humankind. Whole sections of our history have been
wiped out and can never be reconstituted. These objects cannot be understood
once they have been removed from their archaeological context and divorced
from the whole to which they belong. Only professional archaeological
excavations can help recover their identity, their date and their location.
But so long as there is demand from the international art market these
objects will be looted and offered for sale. 

In response of this urgent situation, a list of categories of African
archaeological objects particularly at risk from looting was drawn up at the
Workshop on the Protection of the African Cultural Heritage held in
Amsterdam from 22 to 24 October 1997. Organised by ICOM (International
Council of Museums), within the framework of its AFRICOM programme, it
brought together professionals from African, European and North American
museums to set up a common policy for fighting against the illicit traffic
in African cultural property, and to promote regional and international
agreements. 

The Red List includes the following categories of archaeological items: 

• Nok terracotta from the Bauchi Plateau and the Katsina and Sokoto regions
(Nigeria) 

• Terracotta and bronzes from Ife (Nigeria) 

• Esie stone statues (Nigeria) 

• Terracotta, bronzes and pottery from the Niger Valley (Mali) 

• Terracotta statuettes, bronzes, potteries, and stone statues from the Bura
System (Niger, Burkina Faso) 

• Stone statues from the North of Burkina Faso and neighbouring regions

• Terracotta from the North of Ghana (Komaland) and Côte d'Ivoire 

• Terracotta and bronzes so-called Sao (Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria) 


These objects are among the cultural goods most affected by looting and
theft. They are protected by national legislation, banned from export, and
may under no circumstances be put on sale. 

An appeal is therefore being made to museums, auction houses, art dealers
and collectors to stop buying them. 
This list is of objects which are particularly at risk, but in no way should
it be considered exhaustive. The question of the legality of export arises
with regard to any archaeological item.


Press Releases

NIGERIA'S OWNERSHIP OF NOK AND SOKOTO OBJECTS RECOGNISED

5 March 2002 

ICOM welcomes the French government's decision to recognise Nigeria's
ownership of three Nok and Sokoto artefacts. 

The objects in question were acquired by France in 1999 for the planned
Musée du Quai Branly and belong to the categories of archaeological objects
identified on the ICOM Red List as being amongst the types of cultural goods
most affected by thefts and looting. They are protected by national
legislation and banned from export: on no account must they be purchased or
offered for sale. 

ICOM also applauds Nigeria's generous decision to deposit the artefacts
concerned with the Musée du Quai Branly , to be exhibited with the museum's
permanent collection, for the exceptionally long period of 25 years
(renewable), in exchange for France's recognition of its ownership. ICOM
recommends that visitors should be clearly informed of the precise status of
these objects and the way in which they were discovered. 

ICOM would like to take this opportunity to issue a reminder that the
looting of archaeological items in Africa causes irreparable damage,
destroying vital evidence of the history of the continent and of mankind as
a whole. Museums must therefore take a lead in combating the illicit trade
in cultural goods, by adopting scrupulous acquisition policy in line with
the ICOM Code of Professional Ethics for museum professionals. 



ANNEX 2

Nok Terracottas (500 B.C.–200 A.D.)". In Timeline of Art History. New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nok/hd_nok.htm (October 2000) 

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Seated Dignitary, c. 250 B.C.
Nok People, Africa, Eastern Nigeria, Nok Plateau
Fired Clay; H. 36 1/4 x W. 10 7/8 x D.14 in.
The John R. Van Derlip Fund
http://www.artsMIA.org 


In 1943, tin mining in the vicinity of the village of Nok near the Jos
Plateau region of Nigeria brought to light a terracotta head, evidence of
the oldest known figurative sculpture south of the Sahara. Although
stylistically related heads, figures, animals, and pottery shards have been
found in a number of Nigerian sites since that time, such works are
identified by the name of the small village where the first terracotta head
was discovered. Artifacts continue to be unearthed without documentation of
the context in which they were buried, a lack of extensive archaeological
study that has severely limited our understanding of Nok terracottas. One of
the earliest African centers of ironworking and terracotta figure
production, the Nok culture remains an enigma.


Most Nok sculpture is hollow and coil-built like pottery. Finely worked to a
resilient consistency from local clays and gravel, the millennia-long
endurance of these ancient objects is a testament to the technical ability
of their makers. This is not to say that Nok sculpture has survived
unchanged by time. The slip (the mixture of clay and water used to give
pottery surfaces an even texture) of many Nok terracottas has eroded,
leaving a grainy, pocked exterior that does not reflect their original
smooth appearance. Most of the Nok sculpture found consists of what appear
to be portrait heads and bodies fragmented by damage and age. The recovered
portions of the baked clay bodies that have survived show that they were
sculpted in standing, sitting, and genuflecting postures.

Nok head fragments were once part of entire bodies and are the most renowned
objects within the corpus known to date. These objects are so highly varied
that it is likely they were modeled individually rather than cast from
molds. Although terracottas are usually formed using additive techniques,
many Nok pieces were sculpted subtractively in a manner similar to carving.
This distinctive approach suggests that a comparable wood-carving tradition
may have influenced them. The heads of Nok terracottas are invariably
proportionally large relative to the bodies, and while not enough is known
of Nok culture to explain this apparent imbalance, it is interesting to note
that a similar emphasis of the head in later African art traditions often
signifies respect for intelligence.


Although every Nok head is unique, certain stylistic traits are found
throughout the corpus of known work. Triangular eyes and perforated pupils,
noses, mouths, and ears combine to depict men and women with bold,
abstracted features. Perhaps the most striking aspects of Nok sculptures are
the elaborately detailed hairstyles and jewelry that adorn many of the
figures. The variety, inventiveness, and beauty of their design is a
beguiling record of cultivated devotion to body ornamentation. But as
captivating as these embellishments are, the range of expression in Nok
terracottas is far from limited to depictions of idealized health and
beauty. Some pottery figures appear to depict subjects suffering from
ailments such as elephantiasis and facial paralysis. These "diseased"
visages may have been intended to protect against illness but, beyond
conjecture, their meaning and the significance of Nok sculpture in general
are still unknown.

The great sophistication of Nok terracottas has led some scholars to believe
that an older, as yet undiscovered tradition must have preceded Nok
terracotta arts. It has also been suggested that Nok terracottas have some
sort of relationship to later portrait arts, such as those of Ife, but this
is currently unproven. Masterful relics severed from their predecessors and
successors by the passage of time, Nok terracottas currently occupy an
important but isolated space in the history of African art.

Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art


ANNEX 3

NOK TERRACOTTA ACQUIRED ILLEGALLY BY FRANCE


Wikipedia.
Seated person. Nok cultural object, 500 BC - 500 AD.
Quai Branly, depot of Louvre, inv.No.70.1998.11. One of the three stolen
items from Nigeria now in Paris.