Africa's Struggle for Its Art: A Postcolonial Defeat

On March 29, 2022, La Maison Française, NYU Africa House, and Deutsches Haus at NYU presented a conversation between Bénédicte Savoy, one of the world’s foremost experts on restitution and cultural heritage, and visual culture theorist and activist, Nicholas Mirzoeff, on Savoy’s new book “Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat” (Princeton, April 2022, translated by Susanne Meyer-Abich).. In her book, Savoy reconstructs the initial restitution debate in Europe, which started in the 1960s when African intellectuals, politicians, and museum professionals called for the return of royal and sacred artworks stolen by European colonial forces, and the fierce resistance these calls were met with in Europe. The conversation will focus on how many of the arguments and talking points that have dominated public discourse around restitution in recent years were developed and honed by European collecting institutions since the 1960s, what roles “historical mechanisms of forgetting, renunciation, and silence” have played in the process, and why restitution is fundamental to any future relationship between African countries and the West. About “Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat” For decades, African nations have fought for the return of countless works of art stolen during the colonial era and placed in Western museums. In Africa’s Struggle for Its Art, Bénédicte Savoy brings to light this largely unknown but deeply important history. One of the world’s foremost experts on restitution and cultural heritage, Savoy investigates extensive, previously unpublished sources to reveal that the roots of the struggle extend much further back than prominent recent debates indicate, and that these efforts were covered up by myriad opponents. Shortly after 1960, when eighteen former colonies in Africa gained independence, a movement to pursue repatriation was spearheaded by African intellectual and political classes. Savoy looks at pivotal events, including the watershed speech delivered at the UN General Assembly by Zaire’s president, Mobutu Sese Seko, which started the debate regarding restitution of colonial-era assets and resulted in the first UN resolution on the subject. She examines how German museums tried to withhold information about their inventory and how the British Parliament failed to pass a proposed amendment to the British Museum Act, which protected the country’s collections. Savoy concludes in the mid-1980s, when African nations enacted the first laws focusing on the protection of their cultural heritage. "Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat" was funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).