The French-Senegalese director Mati Diop is the first person of the black race to be crowned with the most important prize of the Berlinale, the "Golden Bear", and her documentary film "Dahomey", which investigates the return of the looted royal treasures of the African kingdom of Dahomey from Paris to the present-day Republic of Benin, brought the topic of the stolen treasures of Africa to the fore. which world museums are proud of.
First some background information: The Dahomey of the film's title is a former monarchy in West Africa that existed from about 1600 until the end of the 19th century when it became part of French West Africa. It existed on the territory of today's Republic of Benin.
Francuska
In November 2021, the media reported extensively on the decision of Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, to return to the Republic of Benin 26 items of Abomey royal treasures looted by colonial units in the 19th century and representing a "historic moment of national pride" for the Beninese authorities.
"But the return of those 26 pieces is only the first stage", said the President of Benin, Patrice Talon, and emphasized that Macron promised to return the rest as well.
Among the returned works are the totem statues of the former kingdom of Abomey as well as the throne of King Behanzin, which was looted by French colonial troops during the sacking of Abomey Palace in 1892.
Only in the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum, where the returned exhibits are stored, there are 70.000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa. Ethiopia demands the return of 3081 items from France and Chad as many as 10 of them. Since 000, in addition to Benin, six other countries, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Chad, Mali and Madagascar, submitted requests for the return of heritage to France.
Great Britain
A month after Macron, Great Britain also began to return African cultural assets, known as the Benin bronze, which should immediately be said to have nothing to do with the recently mentioned Republic of Benin, but with the city of Benin City in Nigeria, which was destroyed by the British army in 1897. in the "Benin Punitive Expedition" expedition. The royal palace was looted and set on fire.
Photo: APExhibits of Benin bronzes in Hamburg
Benin bronzes represent thousands of bronze sculptures, plaques and carvings, which were made between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries.
The University of Cambridge has returned one of the bronze sculptures from the Benin Kingdom period to Nigeria, becoming a first in the UK. He returned the statue of a rooster, which was taken by British troops from the palace of the then ruler of Benin. It is one of the priceless artefacts, which was presented to Jesus College, part of Cambridge, in 1905 by the father of one of the students.
In November 2022, the Horniman Museum in London returned more than 72 objects, among them the Benin bronzes.
The following month, Cambridge University agreed to return 116 bronze objects, and 22 were returned by Germany.
From 2026, the returned bronze objects will be exhibited at the West African Art Museum in Benin City.
The British Museum in London does not want to return stolen treasures to Nigeria, and it houses the largest collection of these objects. Also, the Museum in Bristol, which undertook to return its sculptures from Benin, has not yet fulfilled its promise. European museums, meanwhile, are involved in the Benin dialogue group with the Nigerian authorities, whose aim is to build a new museum in that country that should return the bronze sculptures.
Three pieces of Benin Bronzes are displayed at the Museum for Art and Crafts in Hamburg, Germany, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018. Germany is returning hundreds of artifacts known as Benin Bronzes that were mostly looted from western Africa by a British colonial expedition and subsequently sold to collections around the world, including German museums. (Daniel Bockwoldt/dpa via AP)
Photo: APNew museum in Berlin
Experts estimate that between 85 and 90 percent of Africa's heritage is located outside the continent.
In December 2021, the Humboldt Forum opened in Berlin, a large cultural center in the former royal palace that houses the collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art. They contain more than 20.000 works of art and other works from Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania, many of which are from former German colonies.
Museum of African Art in Belgrade
Dr. Veda and Zdravko Pečar they donated their collection of African art objects, and it is now the basis of the Museum of African Art in Belgrade. Apart from Rastko Petrović, the Pečarevs are perhaps our most famous lovers of Africa. They spent more than 20 years in Africa: Veda Zagorac-Pečar was the adviser for culture of the Yugoslav embassy in Tunisia, and Zdravko Pečar visited the African continent several times as a journalist, and then he was the ambassador there.
They were in Guinea at the time of the confrontation of the people there with the colonizers and with everything that had to do with them, when numerous works of authentic African art ended up on the pyres.
"It so happened that in those days, in the heat of revolutionary enthusiasm, I managed to save three objects of extraordinary beauty, to place them in my hotel room and prepare them for shipment."
They were a tom-tom drum, a nimbus mask from the Baga tribe that embodies the spirit of fertility, so it was believed that pregnant women were under her protection, and another large metal mask, decorated with cowrie shells. However, the director of the Guinea Museum saw them at the airport, judged them to be national treasures, and ordered the police to confiscate them.
Zdravko Pečar did not want to give up his cases, so the president of Guinea, Seku Toure, found out about his problem and intervened. "That's how our initiation into the art of black Africa began." Then "professional collectors, especially those from the United States of America, Great Britain and France, who came regularly to West Africa to buy objects for state museums, private collections and sales galleries, or rather."
From the mask collection
However, the long-term presence of the Pechars in Africa made it soon known what they were collecting, so that "from the farthest points of the savannah, often up to 1000 kilometers away, Africans came with bags on their backs or objects well wrapped in cloths, so that no one could see what they were carrying to a Yugoslav friend, who also visited them and visited their villages on the spot, taking an interest in masks, fetishes and ritual objects of hidden tribal mysteries."
This was the basis of today's museum collection, which includes about 2000 items from Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo, Cameroon and Congo.
In Paris there is a museum with 70.000 items of African art, in London since 2000 the month of October has been dedicated to African culture, in New York there is a Center for African Art. All of them are revaluing African art: while until recently the approach to the African artefact as primarily ethnographic dominated, in these museums the emphasis is on the work itself and its unique aesthetics.
