Africa’s Struggle for Its Art

Film and literature play a central role in the restitution debate of the 1970s, opening a space for political imagination. Many African filmmakers trained in former large colonial cities, where they began to address their own culture whose presence they encountered in museums.

Perhaps I can highlight the chapter on the film “You Hide Me” from 1971, a poignant graduation project by a twenty-six-year-old graduate of the London Film School, Nii Kwate Owoo. Here, the camera follows a young man into a museum’s exhibition hall, where he opens enormous glass showcases full of well-ordered African works from the Asante empire in what is now Ghana and from the kingdom of Benin. The voice-over describes their violent provenance, using terms such as looting and captivity. As the protagonist moves into further rooms, the commentator addresses another important asymmetry: the classification of African art by the former colonial powers, with Europeans and Americans presenting their expertise, and their selection of what were to be considered masterpieces, as unassailable.

The film is a pointed political attack against the uselessness of keeping African cultural goods in the depots of museums: an enormous hoarded capital buried in the collective unconsciousness of African and European societies. In the 1960s, films by intellectuals on the African continent were screened at Pan-African film festivals. Owoo won applause far beyond London for his statements and his work. His film continued to attract attention for years.

Ever since, popular films have addressed the restitution debate, from the ­1953 anticolonial film “Les Statues Meurent Aussi” (banned by the French Film Institute for a decade due to its supposedly “biased and subversive character”) to “The Mask” and recently, “Black Panther.” These films continue to reach a wide public and make the argument for repatriation of African culture visually compelling. They pose the question outright, as Owoo did: “How can the government of independent African states explain to the generation that is now growing up that they can’t see their cultural heritage in their own countries?”

There is real value in turning to figures and initiatives of the 1970s and 80s for guidance today. It allows us to recognize the political, personal, administrative, and ideological constellations that used to shape the debate for half a century.

We must seek to interrupt the institutional patterns enacted for decades in Europe.One of the most satisfying consequences was the passing of a law at the French Assemblée Nationale in 2020, allowing to return a series of artefacts to Senegal and the Republic of Benin. There was not a single voice in the Assemblée raised in opposition to the law’s passing. For me that was extremely important. The fact that there was no opposition there made me realize that the people’s representatives – if you want to use that dated term – were in agreement with the project of restitution. I was thrilled to be in Cotonou for the arrival of great works from the musée du quai Branly Jacques Chirac in Paris.

This return was a very emotional event. I can see that the tide is turning. In 2018, when we discussed restitutions in Cotonou with the Beninese Minister of Culture, he said: “I do not believe in restitutions. But if they happen one day, it will be like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the reunification of the two Koreas.” Today, for African heritage in the world, the Berlin Wall has fallen. A large gap has opened in this wall, and some countries, like Benin, are already largely committed to the future. For me, it is not a matter of continuing to demolish the rest of the wall with a hammer. Instead, I observe those who today, on the African continent, are working to reconnect objects with their societies of origin. There is no more beautiful project.