[MSN] LIVING IN A DIFFERENT WORLD: JUSTIFICATIONS FOR NON-RESTITUTION OF STOLEN CULTURAL OBJECTS

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From: kwame opoku [mailto:k.opoku at sil.at] 

LIVING IN A DIFFERENT WORLD: JUSTIFICATIONS FOR NON-RESTITUTION OF STOLEN
CULTURAL OBJECTS
 
I become slightly nervous these days when I see an article or a note on the
question of restitution of art signed by a European or American museum
director, wondering whether we are going to read something that the normal
person can understand even if he does not quite accept the argumentation or
whether we will be faced with a statement that is so astonishing that one
wonders whether we are living in the same world as the museum director.
   When I read the article, "Whose culture is it? Museums and the collection
of antiquities" by Phillipe de Montebello, Director, The Metropolitan Museum
of Arts, New York, in The Berlin Journal, (Fall 2007, No.15, pp.33-37.) -
http://www.americanacademy.de/home/must-views/the-berlin-journal/ - I had
the impression that there was no ground for anxiety or nervousness. I was
reading a normal article which I may or may not like. But at the end of
article came the shock. The director of The Metropolitan Museum of Arts ends
his article with the following revealing conclusions: 

"As Neil McGregor, the director of the British Museum has often said very
persuasively, the Greekness of Greek art at the museum is doubly clear
because the art of Egypt and Sumer are available just ten steps away for
comparison.
   As the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has argued, the treasures in the
world's major museums belong to an international, cosmopolitan society. Our
museums are a kind of cultural family tree on whose branches all of us can
find ourselves. It would be an odd world indeed if we had to travel to the
remotest corners of the earth in order to see art."

   Does the author seriously believe that in answer to a Greek who is
demanding the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens, one can pacify him
or her with the answer that Greek art can be better seen in the British
Museum because next to the stolen Greek art he is reclaiming there is also
the stolen Egyptian art which clearly brings out the outstanding
characteristics of Greek art? That the 
comparative or contrasting study is best done in London and not in Athens or
Cairo? Will anyone dare to tell the people of Benin that the craftsmanship
of the stolen Benin bronzes is better appreciated when seen in contrast and
comparison to the stolen Ife or stolen Baule pieces in the Ethnologisches
Museum in Berlin?
Whom did the museum director seek to convince with this reasoning? Was he
perhaps addressing himself only to the converted?
   What should one say about the statement that: "the treasures in the
world's major museums belong to an international, cosmopolitan society"? I
thought until now that the argument had been that those treasures belonged
to the whole world but now I read that they belong to an "international,
cosmopolitan society". Does this society include the people of Benin and the
people of
Kumasi? Do the museum officials even know where Kumasi is? Will the people
of the Sahel region realize that they are part of an international,
cosmopolitan society? As for the "cultural family tree", it is probably
better not to say anything about it. For in no time in the history of the
world have the African peoples been made to feel they were not part of
mankind as much as in the 19th and 20th Centuries, in the heydays of
colonialism when most of the plunder of African art took place and the
so-called world museums, The British Museum in London, The Louvre in Paris,
the Ethnology Museum in Berlin, and a host of others were filled with looted
African art treasures which they stubbornly refuse to return. Our own days
have seen the increased racism which prevents Africans from entering Europe
where governments have set up an army, Frontext, with the sole purpose of
preventing African refugees from entering Europe. What kind of family is
that?
   I do not know in what sense the word "cosmopolitan" is used in this
context. Most people understand by "cosmopolitan" a person belonging to more
than one nation, speaking several languages or at home in several countries.
These would normally be the rich, those who have houses in London,
apartments in Paris and perhaps a country house in Portugal; the kind of
person who eats breakfast in London, lunch in Paris and spends the evening
in Berlin. I have not heard it used with reference to the cowherds who spend
some days in Ghana and move on to Burkina Faso or Togo, moving through
different cultures and using different languages; they may drink Coca Cola,
have a mobile phone and occasionally, even eat Italian pizza. The
cosmopolitans will normally be Europeans or Americans and most often,
well-educated and well-connected but will this description necessarily apply
to our average man from Kwadaso or Sururele? Or does the ordinary man from
Accra or Lagos not count? Will it apply to Africans who have to apply for
every short visit to France, Britain or Germany and are usually treated as
undesirables by the various European and American embassies and consulates
in the world? There is not a single European government that will grant a
visa to an African whose sole purpose is to visit a museum in London, Paris
or Berlin .Do the treasures in the museums no longer belong to the ordinary,
Baule, Edo or Yoruba or Zulu whose ancestors produced these objects stolen
by the colonialists? The museum director must explain to us what he means.
    The museum director declares with confidence that "It would be an odd
world indeed if we had to travel to the remotest corners of the earth in
order to see its art". What a remarkable statement from a museum director in
whose museum there are objects from every corner of the world. When the
objects were being collected nobody seemed to have been concerned that they
were from the "remotest corners of the earth". The means of transportation
and communications were not all that very developed in those days compared
to our modern facilities and yet we are being told there are "remote corners
of the earth". Are there "remotest corners" in Europe and the USA or are
they all in Africa, Asia and Latin America? Does "remotest" depend on where
we are or is this all measured from London or New York? In other words, is
the usual Eurocentricism at work here? The kind of ideology that proclaims
certain peoples and their arts as "primitive" and forever "primitive" even
though the Europeans are spending considerable force and resources in
collecting their works and imitating them or copying their style or deriving
inspiration from the same works in order to be modern?
   I have heard the argument that in this age of internet and good
communi-cations, the whole world is connected and that it does not really
matter where art objects are located. Apparently, not all museum directors
share this view. This argument seems to apply only when the art objects are
located in London and New York. Is the Director of The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York, which signed the infamous Declaration on the Importance
and Value of Universal Museums (2002) renouncing here the principle "that
museums serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every
nation?" It seems in the end that the so-called Universal Museums are only
universal in the sense that they have stolen objects from the "remotest
corners of the earth."
   The Metropolitan Museum of Arts is one of those museums that recently
returned to Italy art objects which had been stolen from Italy. This return
violates the basic principle underlying the infamous Declaration, i.e., not
to return any stolen or looted art object to its place of origin. Having
taken this step in favour of Italy, which may or may not be "remotest corner
of the earth", depending on where one may be standing, will he and his
colleagues finally start seriously considering returning some of the stolen
African art objects back to Africa which is not very far from Italy,
depending on where one is standing?

   It is noticeable that the director of a museum which boasts of some of
the finest pieces of African art did not mention even once in an article
dealing with restitution or repatriation, African art. Does the museum not
include African antiquities under the designation antiquities? Is this a
reflection of the usual Euro-American arrogance towards Africans and of the
belief that we will never dare to ask Western Europe and the USA for the
return of our art objects?  If so, they are making a serious mistake. Or is
this a confirmation of the belief of many European and American museum
directors that these museums are doing Africans a great favour by keeping
our cultural objects?
   It is true that the writer mentions Egyptian art but following the false
ideas of Hegel and co, many Europeans and Americans do not consider Egypt as
part of Africa and consequently, Egyptian art, in their opinion, does not
fall into the category of African Art.(1) 



                                                                Kwame Opoku,
4 January,2008.

(1)The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, follows this Hegelian line in
the organization of its art objects. Thus it has a Department of Egyptian
Art which is for Egyptian Art. All other art works from the rest of Africa
are in the Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Thus
Africa as a continent is not recognized as a concept for the learned museum
specialists. It seems the arts of the rest of Africa have nothing in common
with Egyptian art. It seems the museum directors of Europe and America have
arrogated to themselves the right to define what is African and what is not.
Kwame Nkrumah and Gamal Abdel Nasser thought Egypt was in Africa and
admitted Egypt as one of the founding States of the OUA and now, the African
Union. Anwar Sadat and Hosini Mubarak have kept Egypt in the African family
of nations. Were they mistaken, not realizing perhaps that the culture of
the Pharaohs is better located somewhere outside Africa and not in proximity
to Sudan, Mauritania, Somalia, Senegal and Mali? This is a question we will
take up elsewhere. Here it suffices to state that this is basically one of
the many racist distinctions that Europeans have tried to introduce into
African affairs.