He called for the eventual return of African artworks from France to their countries of origin. Estimates of the percentage of African historical objects that are held by museums outside the continent are shockingly high: 80 percent by one analysis, as much as 95 percent by another.Īll of this would be significant but largely without effect––these kinds of requests have been raised for some time and are almost always denied––were it not for an unexpected move by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, two years ago. Other African nations are expected to follow suit: Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso will presumably be heard from soon. Benin, too, is requesting that its artifacts be repatriated, among them palace trappings and thrones stolen by French soldiers in the late 19th century. While the Brits are at it, the residents of Easter Island would like them to return “Hoa Hakananai’a,” one of the island’s famous thousand-year-old statues, which was taken by British sailors in 1868. Between 18, Lord Elgin stripped these statues and friezes from the Parthenon, eventually selling them to the British Museum. Greece wants the Elgin Marbles back, too, and has been agitating for their return for almost a century. The museum recently underwent a $73 million renovation, but its contents are still pillaged material, and the Congolese would like them back. ![]() From 1885, when King Leopold II of Belgium declared himself the sole owner of almost a million square miles of central Africa as well as all the area’s inhabitants, to its eventual independence in 1960, the country was the victim of colonial cruelty astounding even by the standards of the day its resources were stripped, its population enslaved and murdered, and much of its cultural patrimony––masks, statues, sculptures, musical instruments, the contents of graves––spirited away to the town of Tervuren, where the larger part of the stolen bounty was housed in an institution now known as the Africa Museum. ![]() The Democratic Republic of the Congo wants its things back. British clothier Vollebak makes garments for today’s superhero.
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