The road to restitution is paved with good intentions. Everyone agrees that a country should return works of art that have been stolen or looted. But the reality is different, at least for France, which has long been at the forefront of this issue and is now lagging behind. As proof of this, a framework bill to facilitate restitutions, which was due to be submitted to Parliament in April but was then postponed until the fall, could be put off indefinitely.
The subject of contention is Africa, with a more than dismaying finding: 90% of its cultural heritage is said to be outside the continent, much of it in Europe, especially among former colonial powers. France, for example, owns 90,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa, 70,000 of which are kept at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris alone.
When Madonna adopts a braided hairstyle or Rihanna poses with a Nefertiti crown, the internet goes wild, denouncing "cultural appropriation." But the fact that the West has appropriated African heritage moves almost no one. For things to change, it took President Emmanuel Macron to slam his fist on the table in Ouagadougou in 2017, promising to promote restitutions to Africa; his speech actually shook the whole of Europe.
A 2018 report by Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese Felwine Sarr called for massive restitutions to African countries. In 2021, France returned to Benin 26 objects from the Abomey treasure that its troops had looted – the first successful restitution obtained by an African country, though it could have been more substantial.
But since then, things have slowed down. After all, to make restitution, you have to get around an ironclad rule: the inalienability of public collections. Two restitution laws passed in 2023, one concerning property looted from Jews and the other aimed at returning human remains to the countries of origin, have broken this rule in the name of a "compelling reason" and an "overriding general interest."
A painful story
On the other hand, the third bill, which aims to encourage restitution to Africa, does not include any compelling reasons. As first reported by Le Monde, the current draft has been set aside because the Conseil d'Etat, which advised the government on the draft bill, considered that inalienability should take precedence.
And yet, this principle was easy to find: It is called "colonization." It has to be recognized that the political context has skewed the acquisition of a very large quantity of African objects in France – two-thirds of which come from the colonial period. The subject remains explosive and taboo and implies repentance.
You have 57.15% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.