Many museums jealously guard their large collections of artefacts sourced from far corners of the world, pleased with the number of visitors that are drawn to their institutions to see them. Surely though, when it ends up that the foreign museums have more of a cultures artefacts that the national museums in their home country have, isn’t it time to re-think whether the balance needs to be redressed?

From:
Modern Ghana

MORE DOGON IN MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY, PARIS THAN IN NATIONAL MUSEUM, BAMAKO?
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | 16 hours ago

“Malian cultural heritage has for several decades, undergone a massive transfer toward Europe and the United States. Analyzing the phenomenon in its universality, it seems very clearly to be the translation of an unequal relation between poor (weak) and wealthy (powerful) nations. The cultural assets of poor nations are being exported to rich nations. Examples to the contrary do not exist”.

There is no doubt that the current exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly, entitled, “Dogon” is the most comprehensive and definitely one of the best exhibitions on the well-known culture of the Dogon, Mali. The exhibits are all so impressive that one cannot easily pick out any objects as more interesting and show them to readers, especially Africans who may not be able to visit this excellent exhibition in view of existing restrictions placed on Africans seeking to visit Europe. In any case, France would not accept as ground for requesting a visa for France, the current exhibitions on Dogon, Angola and Voodoo in Paris.
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Perhaps as one of the areas of the world that has lost the largest quantities of artefacts, Africa is rapidly becoming one of the loudest voices in the campaigns for the return of artefacts from the museums & institutions of the west.

From:
Afrik.com

African cultural heritage fight with the West fuelled by national identity
Wednesday 12 May 2010 / by Alicia Koch

The question of African cultural heritage in the West is still hanging in the balance. Should their valuable artifacts remain in European and North American institutions that possess the necessary preservation techniques and means or should they be returned to their country of origin where they could forge a much needed sense of national identity? Shock waves created by the international conference on the protection and restitution of “looted” Cultural Heritage which took place in Cairo, April 8, and led by Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the powerful Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, has revived a debate that has long been relegated to furtive whispers.

At a time when the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, known for its remarkable collection of primitive art, has decided to give back a Makonde mask that has been in its possession since 1985 to Tanzania, the issue of the restitution of sacred African artifacts could not be more sensitive. Stolen from a museum in Dar Es Salaam, in 1984, the mask found its way into the prestigious Swiss museum where it was kept for 25 years! Given back to the Eastern African country officially as a “gift” at a formal ceremony held under the auspices of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in Paris on Monday, the mask is well on its way back to its ancestral abode. This marks a further step in the process of the restitution of looted artifacts to Africa.
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