EFarewell is usually not a happy affair, but it was a historic moment: In a state ceremony in the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, France returned 26 art objects that the French colonial troops had in the kingdom of Dahomey, now Benin, at the end of the 19th century had robbed.
This moment is historical because it marks a turning point. With the first return of this kind, France is starting a long process of restitution of looted art that will put other countries under pressure. In her speech during the ceremony, the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy compared the return with the fall of the Berlin Wall: “There is a before and after,” said Savoy.
As recently as four years ago, no one could have imagined that France, which had been “mute” and “self-assured” for so long, would make the start and be the first former colonial power to return looted art, said Savoy.
This turning point is also thanks to her work. French President Emmanuel Macron commissioned her and the Senegalese author and social scientist Felwine Sarr in 2018 to write a report in which they both requested the return and which caused a sensation in many museums around the world.
The American magazine Time has just described the “Sarr-Savoy Report” as a “testament in the fight against colonial inheritance and violence” and included both authors in its list of the most influential personalities of 2021.
Savoy explicitly praised the “courage” of President Macron, who a few months after his election in November 2017 had promised to return the looted art in a speech to students in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. “I belong to a generation of French for whom the crimes of European colonization are indisputable and part of our history,” Macron said at the time.
The 26 works have spent 130 years in French museums, first in the ethnographic collection of the Musée du Trocadéro, then in the Quai Branly. There they make up only half of the treasure that the French had stolen. But three of the 26 works, the life-size wooden sculptures depicting the three kings, were among the most impressive exhibits in the Paris museum and were prominently in the focus of the African department.
Royal hybrid figures
Now, for a short week and up to and including Sunday, the figures assigned magical powers can be seen in the exhibition “Bénin, reproduction of 26 works of the royal treasure of Abomey”, including a throne, altars, a robe, a loom and Cult objects.
In addition to King Glélé, Ghézo and Béhanzin, the impressive hermaphroditic figures – half human, half bird, half human, half lion, half human, half shark – the tiny black and white photo of King Béhanzin with his entourage in exile is hardly noticeable and which had been recorded in Fort-de-France in 1894.
Humiliated, desperate: King Béhanzin and his family at Fort Tartenson
Source: Gaston Emerigon Fabre © musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
The overthrown ruler no longer has any of the power of the shark in this photo. He wears traditional clothes, pulls a long pipe, and has an embroidered cap on his head. The depression is written all over the face of Behanzin and his family. The king was not only overthrown, but deliberately humiliated. The palace looted, the art stolen, he in exile.
The French general Alfred-Amédée Dodd had set a trap for Béhanzin after taking the royal city of Abomey, kidnapped the king and had him kidnapped to the Caribbean island of Martinique. Ten years later, the French moved him to another colony, Algeria.
Béhanzin had come closer to his homeland, but he never saw it again. He died in Bilda in 1896, a sad king without a realm. Years later, his son took the ashes home.
The proportion of African cultural heritage that is not stored or shown on the continent but in European and American museums is estimated at 85 to 90 percent. 90,000 objects are in France alone, 70,000 of them in the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, 46,000 were incorporated into the collections during the colonial era.
The Benin ex-President Nicéphore Soglo first called for the return of the cultural heritage in 2013 in an appeal published by the newspaper Le Monde. He and his co-signers emphasized the “invaluable historical, spiritual and cultural value” of the objects.
But France at that time was still referring to the principle of the inalienability of its collections, a law that made sales or restitutions impossible. It was not until December 24th last year that parliament passed a new law allowing exceptions.
Detail of a door from the King Giele Palace in Benin
What: AP
The new director of the Chirac Museum, Emmanuel Kasarhérou, is busy with an inventory of the museum’s 300,000 objects and wants to identify all the works that have been looted.
When asked by French journalists whether he feared that the Paris museum would lose its visitors, Director Kasarhérou replied: “I think the younger generations will not come to the museum if they feel that these questions of origin are none of our business . ”It is the“ end of the age of arrogance, ”as Savoy once put it.
The works will be shipped in November and will only arrive at the presidential palace, then can be seen in the restored fortress in Ouidah, a hub for the slave trade that the Portuguese had built until they will soon find their place in their own museum, the Musée de l ‘Epopée des Amazones et des Rois du Danhomè (MEARD), which is being built with French money.
According to Macron on Wednesday in Paris, the aim is not to “get rid of all works”, but to follow a “just path” that will open up new ones. The President spoke of a “farewell ceremony”.
But farewells are sometimes followed by tears of joy at an unexpected reunion. Felwine Sarr emphasized his great joy that the exile for Glélé, Béhanzin and Ghézo was not definitive and wished them a safe journey home. “Bon retour chez vous.”
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