[MSN] Ex Africa semper aliquid novi (Tom Flynn's contribution to the Kwame Opoku versus Philippe de Montebello discussion)

[MSN]

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi (Tom Flynn's contribution to the Kwame Opoku
versus Philippe de Montebello discussion)


MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2008
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi

To follow all links in the text below: http://tom-flynn.blogspot.com/ 

A couple of weeks ago, Dr Kwame Opoku of African culture website Afrikanet
wrote an open letter to European and North American museum directors, posing
the question, Is legality a viable concept for European and American museum
directors?

In recent months, Dr Opoku has become one of the most energetic and
determined voices in the restitution debate. His recent letter rehearsed the
now familiar argument that directors of so-called 'encyclopaedic' museums
must acknowledge their illegal ownership of thousands of cultural objects in
their collections. 

One of the people who responded to his letter was Philippe de Montebello,
director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (above left).
Attached to the original article was a picture of a Nok statue (right) which
Mr De Montebello used as the basis for his brief response, which went as
follows:

I read with interest Dr. Kwame Opoku's article European and American Museum
Directors and the Legality Concept and glanced at the photo that accompanied
it.

What a haunting, strange-looking object. There is no caption accompanying
the photograph so I looked in books and found that this was a product of
ancient Nigeria, the Nok culture. I also discovered that more than 2,000
years ago as well an Ife culture in Nigeria produced sculpture that I found
simply divine. As beautiful as anything produced at any time in the West.

Then I went to our African galleries and found - as must our audience of
some 4.5 million visitors a year - that Nigeria seemed to have produced no
art before the much later Benin period, well represented at the Metropolitan
Museum. Why is that? Simply because the Metropolitan Museum does not own
either a Nok or an Ife object. Their export and acquisition are strictly
forbidden, therefore the Metropolitan Museum has refrained from their
acquisition.

We have tried for years to convince the Nigerian authorities to place one
object from each of these great cultures on loan to the Metropolitan for the
benefit of our audiences, but unfortunately, to no avail.

"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. How this advances broad knowledge of the rich cultural history
of Nigeria is a mystery to me."

Philippe de Montebello
Director
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This exchange seems to me to encapsulate the very problem we need to get
beyond if any progress is to be made on the vexed question of museums and
repatriation. I am sympathetic to the position adopted by Dr Opoku, who has
written some penetrating analyses of current debates in museology,
particularly those pertaining to African cultural heritage, a subject
hitherto roundly ignored by universal museum directors. But I am not without
some sympathy for Mr De Montebello, whose job it is to protect his museum's
venerable collections. None of us wants to see the Met diminished. And let's
perhaps applaud Mr De Montebello for bothering to respond to the article.

The problem here is the nature of the dialogue, which is not really a
dialogue at all, but a series of embittered volleys that merely consolidates
the entrenched positions of both parties. Dr Opoku continues to write
uncompromising attacks on museum directors. One can understand his growing
impatience, given the unwillingness of most museum directors to address what
are clearly very serious issues passionately articulated. Moreover, when he
does get a response, as was the case here, he is treated with the sort of
patrician disdain that has become the lingua franca of leading museum
directors across Europe and North America.

It was rather surprising that Mr De Montebello did not recognise the
cultural origin of the Nok statue, given that New York has been a rich and
thriving centre for the trade and collecting of African art and ethnography
since the 1920s. But then he can't be expected to know about everything that
crosses his desk.

However, to use that object in a rhetorical turn to pour contumely on Dr
Opoku's well-intentioned appeals and by extension on the broader issue of
African cultural heritage claims was pretty contemptible. He knows that Dr
Opoku is not arguing for an impoverishment of the Metropolitan's
collections, but such is the need to score cheap points...

The recent UNESCO conference in Athens called for a fresh approach to
cultural heritage issues, for dialogue without prejudice and preconditions.
Here is an example of how instead things can rapidly descend into mutual
suspicion, personal attack and counter-attack. If we proceed in this vein it
is not only cultural heritage claims that will suffer, but the museums
themselves by eroding the pact of trust that exists between the institution
and its public.

The Met was recently forced to adapt its position over the Euphronios
krater, which led to an exchange of other objects that otherwise might not
have happened. Perhaps if the Met looked more sympathetically on the
Nigerian issue, those Nok, Ife and Benin pieces to which Mr De Montebello
refers might then be forthcoming. But it won't happen without friendly
dialogue.

(De Montebello photo source:
www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/arts/design/29mcgr.html)

POSTED BY TOM FLYNN AT 3:28 AM 0 COMMENTS LINKS TO THIS POST
LABELS: AFRIKANET, BENIN SCULPTURE, CULTURAL HERITAGE, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
OF ART, NOK SCULPTURE, PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO

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