"The Museum of Fine Arts has played a fundamental role for national art" in Algeria. Interview with the director and chief curator of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers on the current role ...

Africa of museums: the national museum of fine arts in Algiers, "the most important in Africa"

The National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, here a view from 2014, stands facing the majestic bay of Algiers.

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

13 mins

"The Museum of Fine Arts has played a fundamental role for national art" in Algeria.

Interview with the director and chief curator of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers on the current role and future challenges of the largest art museum on the African continent.

Dalila Orfali tells us about the jewels of the collection, youth, digital, restitution and her vision for 2030.

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: In France, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, all museums are currently still closed.
What is the situation in Algeria

?

Dalila Ofali

In Algeria, museums are not closed at all.

The museums have reopened since September.

On the contrary, we have an audience, an audience especially of young people, because the older people preserve themselves a little and stay at home.

What is the unique side of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, which is one of the largest art museums in Africa

It is the most important museum in Africa, if we speak of art museums.

We have a universal collection, with a large section of Algerian art, the most important in Algeria.

And also a large section of modern art, both Maghrebian and Arab art, the largest in North Africa.

The unique side of the museum is its old collection, but also its building, a listed historical monument since 1995. An Art Deco building located in a historic district of the city of Algiers and already in itself a monument to visit.

Beyond the building, there is also the collection which begins in the 14th century and goes until the 1980s and 1990s. We do not go further, since there has been, in Algiers, since the 2000s, a museum of contemporary and modern art.

Dalila Orfali, director and chief curator of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers, here in 2016. © Farouk Batiche / AFP

When we evoke the Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, we often quote

Les Rochers de Belle-Ile,
by Claude Monet, or the major work of Algerian miniature,

The History of Islam
, by Mohamed Racim.
What is for you the “

Mona Lisa

” of the museum

?

The works of Mohamed Racim (1896-1975) are considered a national heritage treasure.

They are absolutely unique.

Racim shone a lot in Arab countries and was known the world over.

He gave a second birth to the Arab miniature.

At the beginning of the 20th century, an important period for Algeria, the colonial period, he tried to give back its letters of nobility to an art which was an Arab-Muslim art, but also Andalusian, Persian, Mughal etc.

At the same time, he tried to give it an Algerian characteristic.

There is also a very fine collection from the 19th century, with, for example, Monet.

We have Matisse and also a very nice collection for sculpture.

Many great sculptors were born in Algiers and had prizes from Rome, including Paul Belmondo, André Greck, etc.

We have a thousand and one works of very high quality ...

Who is the museum audience

What is good is that we have a very large majority of Algerian audiences.

Above all, a lot of young people visit the museum.

The reason is simple.

Over the past twenty years, the museum has invested heavily in acquiring musical instruments, material for initiation into the art, etc.

Our artistic workshops have attracted a lot of young people.

Of course, since the pandemic, we have had to close the art workshops.

“Free Alphabet”, by Mohamed Khadda (1930-1991), one of the greatest figures of Algerian art at independence.

How many people normally visit the museum

In Algeria, the most famous and highly rated museums are not art museums, but archeology museums, because we are an archaeological land.

Obviously, if you compare the number of visitors between the National Museum of Fine Arts and the site of Djemila [

a Roman city classified as World Heritage by Unesco, note

], we have a very limited number of visitors, because we do not t have not an extremely general public type of collection, but rather elitist.

Normally, we have between 16,000 and 18,000 visitors a year.

Your collection embraces the history of art spanning six centuries, including modern painters such as M'hamed Issiakhem (1928-1985) or Mohamed Khadda (1930-1991).

What place do you reserve today for contemporary art and what role does your museum play for contemporary art or contemporary artists

From 1962 until 2019, the museum played a fundamental role in national art.

Why ?

First of all, it was the first institution - from the last months of 1962 - to acquire works, with the aim of constituting the section of Algerian art.

The museum has especially acquired the most prominent Algerian artists, such as Issiakhem or Khadda.

In the 2000s, also the younger generations.

For the past ten years or so, the museum has been working to organize retrospective exhibitions of the great names in Algerian art every year.

The last, in December 2019, was dedicated to the painter Farès Boukhatem, a great name of the post-independence era.

“Les Aveugles”, by M'hamed Issiakhem (1928-1985), one of the founders of modern painting in Algeria.

Since the pandemic, many museums have changed their relationship with the public and the way they present works.

Has the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers also changed course and invested in digital tools

To tell you the truth, we haven't really invested in these tools.

On the other hand, what we have done during these six months of the museum's closure is to work on our website.

We continued to deliver online exhibitions, documents about our collections, etc.

We exchanged exhibitions.

The museum lent virtual collections for the site of the Palais des Raïs concerning the city of Algiers, etc.

We have established a kind of partnership with our collections, so that the Algerian public can benefit from them online.

I cannot say that we have invested financially [in digital tools], since, since September, we have resumed the normal course of things.

The museum's collection has always been a bridge between the two shores of the Mediterranean, with Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Matisse and Algerian painters like Baya or Khadda.

At the international level, what are the museum's most important collaborations with other museums on the African continent and outside Africa

As in Africa, to my knowledge, there are no other museums of the same typology as ours, there are not so many collaborations.

On the other hand, we have had collaborations with other continents, in particular with the Japanese.

We traded in some of our impressionists.

We have worked with a lot of Italian museums.

Last year, we also signed an agreement with the Prado Museum in Madrid.

And, of course, we also often loaned works to French museums.

For example, a David during the bicentenary of the French Revolution or a very beautiful painting by Guillonnet at the La Rochelle museum, as part of a restoration contract.

“Les Oliviers”, by Mohamed Bouzid (1929-2014), Algerian painter and engraver and father of the seal and coat of arms of the Algerian Republic.

Usually, we opt for exchanges that are fruitful on both sides.

We do the same for our mosaics, archaeological objects, etc.

For example, we have very important tablets from

the vandal era

, almost unique in the Mediterranean world.

They were loaned and, in return, Sweden restored them.

In Africa, I know that there is another Monet painting in South Africa or an Impressionist collection in Cairo, but, for the moment, on the African continent, we have not had an exchange.

► To read also:

Restitution of African works of art: the case of Algeria

The National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers was opened to the public in 1930. More than thirty years later, on the eve of Algeria's independence, many works were transferred by the French to the Musée du Louvre, before being returned -

“

after tough negotiations

”

- to the Algiers Museum of Fine Arts in 1969.

Yes, but it's an old story.

In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron launched a major

debate on the restitution of African heritage

.
What is your take on this debate?
Are the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers or other museums in Algeria concerned by this question

?

In my opinion, the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers does not have a typology of collection that is concerned by this kind of restitution.

The debate launched in France concerns the restitution of property looted at the time of colonization, that is to say historical items for Benin, etc.

We are a museum of fine arts.

On the other hand, I think that there is a part of our archaeological heritage which, indeed, was taken in a way - I do not know how to qualify it ... Obviously, the countries whose memory has been despoiled, all claim the restitution of their history and their memorial heritage.

It is a natural thing when we want to ensure the identity and uniqueness of a nation.

The national heritage is something fundamental.

► To read also:

“Made in Algeria”, the always burning traces of a painful past

Algeria has had a lot of spoliations of archaeological and historical property, in particular our cannons, our archives, etc.

Especially during the first years of the abuses committed by the French expeditionary force, in the 19th century.

At the National Museum of Fine Arts, we are not concerned by the commission [

the report submitted by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy to President Macron focuses only on sub-Saharan heritage and recommends for the case of Algeria “

a specific mission and reflection

»

, Note], but, you know the expression of Frantz Fanon:« to

get out of the big

colonial

night

».

Countries that have been robbed of their memory experience an irreparable loss of memory.

I am African and I am Algerian, therefore, for me, the restitution of the fundamental objects which tell the history and the memory of the peoples, it is fundamental.

"The victim", by Ismaël Samson (1934-1988), Algerian painter and engraver.

In recent years, when

young Algerian photographers

exhibited their work in France, one could feel the desire of these artists to tell and describe their country.
What is the role of a museum like the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers in relation to this question?
And how do you imagine your museum in 2030

?

Algerian youth, like all generations of Algerians - and I think this is the element that most characterizes us compared to other Maghreb countries - we are extremely attached to our national values, and especially to the idea of belonging.

No doubt, because we have suffered for a long time during the various occupations that our land has known.

Young people today visit museums of memorial typologies a lot.

Why ?

Because there is still a need to appropriate this historical memory.

It is true, we, the Museum of Fine Arts, we tell something else.

We tell the story of creativity, of the imagination.

But, our duty is to continue to tell the story of our painting, of our painters - certainly in an increasingly digitized, more and more contemporary way, perhaps in the form of comics or virtual products to reach out to people. youth.

Unfortunately, education on Algerian history was very often confined to the twentieth century.

We are a land of sculptors, mosaics, engravers, painters.

So, one of our fundamental projects is to demonstrate the existence of Algerian art from prehistoric times to the present day, and not to limit it to the 20th century as, alas, it has very often been the case and as has often been desired.

“The Man in Blue”, by Mohamed Temam (1915-1988), Algerian plastic artist, miniaturist, portrait painter and landscape painter.

►

The site of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers, Algeria.

► To read also:

Africa of museums: The national museum of Bardo in Tunisia

► To read also:

Africa of museums: The Macaal in Morocco

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Africa of museums: the national museum of fine arts in Algiers, "the most important in Africa"

Africa of museums: the national museum of fine arts in Algiers, "the most important in Africa"

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