More and more of them are asking for it. Like Benin, which has called for the return of works from French museums, several African countries have expressed their desire to recover works of art from their respective countries. In particular, the quai Branly will return 26 works from the museum to Benin. But France is not the only one concerned, countries like Germany and Belgium must also respond to a certain number of complaints.
In Germany, refunds and permanent loans negotiated
Germany is due to begin restitution to Nigeria of works of art known as Benin bronzes in 2022. Several hundred pieces of this type are stored in the collections of German museums. Among them, 1,100 bronzes from Benin. These works of art, looted in 1897 by the British in what is now Nigeria, were then sold across Europe. Half of the German coins are now in Berlin.
Discussions with Nigeria around a restitution began in 2010 and slowly, awareness has evolved in Germany. Now, the dominant idea is that legal ownership of pieces that have been purchased is not necessarily legitimate, since the blood of victims of British colonization sticks to each of these works.
Paradoxically, it was the inauguration of a new museum in Berlin that accelerated the process. Beninese pieces were to be the highlight of the Humboldt Forum, a museum inaugurated last December in the center of the German capital. A highly contested project since the collections were to be shown in a castle, an identical replica of that of the Hohenzollern family, the imperial family which had launched German colonialism.
In the end, only a few bronzes from Benin will be exhibited there. The restitution model negotiated with Nigeria provides for Germany to keep some of these works in the form of permanent loans.
In Belgium, a law in preparation for an organized and systematic restitution
Belgium has decided to take the bull by the horns so as not to expose itself to controversies concerning ad hoc restitution decisions. No restitution has yet taken place as the current federal government has decided to take a systematic approach. All the objects are gradually listed and identified and depending on their origin, they will automatically be eligible for restitution, essentially to one of the three countries of the Belgian colonial past.
Namely in Congo-Kinshasa to which the country had linked its destiny from 1885, before recovering the double protectorate of Ruanda-Urundi after the German defeat in 1918. But it is from the Democratic Republic of Congo that the immense origin comes from majority of works present in the kingdom. If they are partially dispersed in various museum institutions, the essential is gathered in the same place in Tervueren, at the gates of Brussels. Now called AfricaMuseum or Royal Museum of Central Africa, it is the former Colonial Palace launched in 1897 by King Leopold II, at the origin of colonization. Today it houses 85,000 objects from the former Belgian Congo. Many of these objects should be declassified and be removed from the inalienable heritage.
The figures remain unclear for the moment, but if we focus on objects whose provenance is clearly doubtful, we can estimate that of objects acquired with methods already illegal in the colonial era such as looting, hostage taking. or desecration. 1,500 to 2,000 objects are already classified as ill-gotten. In total, between 35,000 and 40,000 pieces should be eligible for restitution.
Kinshasa has not made an official request, but on the Belgian side, a bill was announced in early July and will be tabled in early 2022 to set in stone the criteria according to which the acquisition of an object must be considered illegitimate in case for example of forced sale.
Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi inaugurated in 2019 the new national museum of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by affirming that the heritage should return from Belgium, but in an organized manner. There should first be an effort to reconstitute representative collections of certain ethnic groups and the rest will take more time because the new Congolese national museum can only accommodate 12,000 pieces for the moment in optimal conditions of conservation.