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London

Paris

Berlin

Updated Tuesday, January 23, 2024-9:30 p.m.

The Minister of Culture,

Ernest Urtasun

, has announced a review of national museums to "overcome the colonial framework", generating a heated debate.

What is being done about this in other European countries?

Let's review.

Belgium: a taboo colonial past

When Urtasun mentioned what is surely the most famous museum in

Belgium

, he used expressions like "terrifying, a racist, colonialist, horrible thing."

None of them fall short.

The

Africa Museum

, formerly known as

the Royal Museum of the Belgian Congo

or

the Royal Museum of Central Africa

, has been and in some ways still is the symbol of the most brutal colonialism, but also of the country's enormous problems in dealing with its past.

The embryo dates back to 1897, when

Leopold II

,

long-time

personal owner of the Congo , before selling it to the State, wanted a colonial section for the Brussels International Exhibition of that year.

They made it in the Africa Palace in Tervuren, on the outskirts of the capital, also building enormous avenues for a spectacular entrance.

Not only did it have animals, stones and African art, but a village was built and more than 250 natives were forced to live there.

Seven of them died while their lives were exposed to the almost million and a half Belgians who came to see that

human zoo

.

The same thing happened almost 60 years later, on the brink of Congo's independence, with hundreds of other citizens displaced against their will.

The Museum, inaugurated as such in a huge building in 2010, already with the next monarch, was

a propaganda weapon at the service of one of the most brutal and ruthless colonial experiences

.

After 75 million euros, five years of renovation and decolonization, in 2018 it reopened its doors.

"The permanent exhibition was outdated and its infrastructure obsolete, but the biggest challenge was to present a contemporary and decolonized vision of Africa in a building that had been designed as a colonial museum," explains the institution.

At the reopening, the director explained to this newspaper that the Museum had been a colonial institution for a century.

"For most Belgians their first encounter with Africa is our museum.

The initial impression of Africa that most Belgians got here is that white is better than black

. We were there to civilize them. The Africans we portray here "They are naked with a spear, and without their own culture," he explained then.

Precisely, this week a collection baptized as

Rethinking

Collections

was inaugurated

, an effort to go further and pull back the thread to trace the origin of many of the pieces, with the intention of returning those that can be their countries of origin.

The idea of ​​the collection and the museum is, they explain, to change the way of looking at the past, after

decades of oppression and even more of uncomfortable silences

.

The technical commissions urged the management to go beyond explanatory texts in the pavilions.

A UN working group recommended "suppressing all colonial propaganda and clearly presenting the violence and inequalities of Belgium's colonial past."

The past and the barbarities committed remain taboo in the country despite the museum

.

It only began to be addressed directly after the publication of the book

The Ghosts of King Leopold

, by

Adam Hochschild

, just 25 years ago.

But it is still ignored, avoided, dodged in schools, in much of the literature.

Changing the museums may be the first step, but there are many others.

United Kingdom: remains of the great "spoliation"

The

decolonization

of British museums began unofficially in

Scotland

in the spring of 2022. Glasgow City Council created a Looting and Repatriation group that agreed to return 50 artifacts from its collections to their countries of origin.

Among them, 17 bronzes from the so-called "Benin treasures" claimed by

Nigeria

and from the looting of British troops that occurred in 1897, and which involved the "distribution" of

thousands of pieces of metal, ivory, coral, wood and precious materials in 161 museums around the world

.

Oxford archaeologist

Dan Hicks

, who made an exhaustive account of the loot of the African kingdom, has been one of the most notable voices in favor of a thorough review of the legacy of the British empire perpetuated in its museums.

"Let us be open to the return of cultural objects that were stolen and to the dismantling of

the structures of inequality, exclusion and racism that have persisted in our institutions since the colonial era

," Hicks wrote in

The Guardian

.

"We are not facing iconoclastic attacks on museums, nor a cultural war; it is simply about updating our museums in a changing world."

"Decolonize" however means "decontextualize" for conservative media, which consider the return of pieces from British museums to their countries of origin as part of the

woke

or "progressive"

culture

that seeks to "rewrite" the colonial past.

In its own way, the

British Museum

began its own revisionist process in 2020, when it removed the bust of its founder,

Hans Sloane

, from the pedestal and decided to exhibit it along with other objects that put its slave past in context.

The real battle for the "decolonization" of the ancient institution is, however, the one being fought on behalf of the

Parthenon

marbles .

Almost half of the friezes and sculptures that decorated the building ended up in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 19th century thanks to

Thomas Bruce

, Earl of Elgin, a British diplomat who arranged the dismantling and transfer of the pieces to the authorities of the Ottoman Empire. .

The Greek Government considers it a "spoliation" and has been demanding its return for decades

.

The Prime Minister,

Kyriakos Mitsotakis

, recently told the BBC that having part of that heritage in London and another in Athens

"is like breaking the Mona Lisa in two

. "

Prime

Minister

Rishi Sunak was so outraged that he canceled his Downing Street meeting.

Sunak referred to the 1963 Parliament Act that prohibits the removal of artifacts in the British Museum's collection, although the institution's president, George Osborne, has been exploring for months

the possibility of a "cultural exchange" with Greece that could mark a before and after

.

The Museums Association of the United Kingdom,

for its part, "unreservedly" supports initiatives to "decolonize collections

. "

"Decolonization does not simply mean relocation," warns the association in a recent statement.

"It is a long-term process that seeks to recognize the integral role of the empire in British museums, from their creation to the present day."

France: Macron does not hesitate

In 2017, shortly after French President Emmanuel Macron arrived at the Elysée, he announced during a trip to Burkina Faso: "Five years from now,

the conditions must be met for the restitution

, temporary or definitive, of African heritage." In the continent".

Almost seven years later, France has

very timidly

begun to return part of the heritage to some of its former colonies, although with conditions.

This is the case of

Benin

, a country to which, in February 2022, it restored 26 pieces of the royal treasures of

Abomey

that were looted in 1892 by French troops.

After the return, the Government highlighted that this initiative marked a turning point "in the construction of a new relationship between France and the African continent."

In most cases, these are masks or sculptures, looted or bought at very low prices during the colonization period.

The former Minister of Culture,

Rima Abdul Malak

, in office until just two weeks ago, was going to present a bill for the restitution of non-Western cultural property, which should be put to a vote early this year.

This rule sets conditions for the return, such as that the pieces are not claimed by a third country or that they have "patrimonial interest", the equivalent of a national treasure.

The country that claims the assets is also obliged to cooperate in their conservation and exhibition in museums, which many art experts have described as

patrimonial paternalism

.

Two years ago, the Quay Branly Museum in Paris commissioned a curator to examine the center's collections, specifically 300 pieces whose provenance is debatable.

Germany: a centenary debate

In

Germany

, the debate on the decolonization of museums is centuries old.

It began with the demand for the return of Nefertiti from the Egyptian authorities.

The bust was discovered in 1912 during excavations by a German team of archaeologists and brought to Berlin in 1913 with the permission of the Administration of Egyptian Antiquities.

But since Egypt was a British protectorate at the time of the excavations,

Egyptian authorities considered Nefertiti to be looted art and have repeatedly demanded her return since 1924.

Unsuccessfully

.

The decolonization of German museums shakes or twists depending on the parties in power and the sensitivity with which each of them faces the revision of History.

Unlike the works looted by the Nazis, whose restitution is governed by the internationally accepted so-called

Washington agreement of 1998

, the decolonization of museums is a path that is walked alone.

The general rule is that there can be no return without certification of ownership and clarifying, in their historical context, the circumstances under which the claimed works arrived in Germany can take years.

Added to this is

the resistance of museums to transfer their funds to the demanding countries without proven political stability and guarantees that they will not suffer plunder

or end up in art auctions.

The case of artworks from the former kingdom of Benin recently returned to Nigeria has been sobering.

The head of Culture of the federal Government,

Claudia Roth

, of the Green Party, returned "out of justice" 1,100 bronze pieces to the descendant of the former king for his exhibition in a state museum that would be built for this purpose.

When the works reached their destination,

the uncrowned heir but with good contacts in the Government kept them as part of his family heritage

.

There will be no museum for the people.

A

decolonization

of museums, as demanded by postcolonial activists and defenders of the restitution of what they call "looted art", does not guarantee the fair and equitable management of these works, nor was it mentioned in the case of the "Benin bronzes "that

the inhabitants of that kingdom were slave traders

, that they received the coveted metals for their bronzes in exchange for human beings and that the objects were used in sacred acts of sacrifice, in which prisoners of war were executed on ancestral altars.

For German museums, it is not an alternative to simply get rid of works from their cities even if they do not publicly refute the moral arguments of those who describe them as "toxic."

The middle path that is already being explored is that of "shared heritage"

and decolonization through exhibitions that explain the dark origin of the pieces.