In 2012, two years before returning objects from its William E. Teel collection, the MFA, Boston was served with competing claims for the return of certain works issued by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria and the Oba Palace in Benin, the official seat of power for the culture whose works were in question. Unsure how to proceed, the museum turned to a member of its board of advisers, Arese Carrington (pictured above)—a granddaughter several generations removed from the Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, who reigned over the Benin Kingdom in 1897 at the time of the British invasion.
Carrington, who resides in Boston, traveled to Benin, where she met with the current Oba in the presence of the full court to make a case for how the work in question could be accessible to the local Beninese diaspora while it remained in Boston. The Oba agreed with Carrington on the condition that the museum and the Benin community work toward a list of goals to establish a sustained collaboration.
“The Oba wanted to make sure the community always had access to the collection,” said Gunsch, who since starting as curator at the MFA in 2014 has worked with Boston locals to ensure that the work on display respects the values and history of the Edo people. In addition, the museum has worked to make visitors aware of the items’ complex history through information provided alongside the work. Part of this process has involved working with the local diaspora to improve interpretations of the museum’s collection—in particular by promoting the learning of Edo, the primary language of Benin.
In the case of the Oba, communication was integral. But when certain communities cease to exist, how does an institution attribute ownership? “Given the accident of colonialism,” said Nzewi, the incoming MoMA curator, “if we accept that objects now come under the jurisdiction of national governments represented by the institution of the museum, how do we determine where to return objects that transcend national boundaries?” By way of example, he cited the so-called Senufo objects comprising intricate sculptural and textile work from West Africa, as well as others attributed to more than one culture, like Luba or Hemba objects originating from the area now governed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Cécile Fromont, an associate professor with a specialty in African art at Yale University, said an important distinction for museums to keep in mind is the separation between ideas of ownership and custodianship, as outlined in a groundbreaking 2018 report on repatriation prepared for the French government by Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr. Citing that document, titled “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics,” Fromont said, “One aspect of the report that is misunderstood is that they are really advocating for restitution, not necessarily repatriation.” The difference, she said, lies in the idea of “ownership of the object and not only location,” and distinguishing between who owns a work and where it is kept can allow for different ways of thinking about questions of cultural patrimony.
“It’s a controversial idea, and one that is maybe coming from more of an economics perspective,” Fromont said. “If the object’s ownership is transferred to African states, then they are able to participate in the international art world in a way that, without it, they are not able to. Once they have a stake, they can sit at the table.”
Ezeluomba, from the New Orleans Museum, raised a different question: “When push comes to shove, what is the average African’s perception? We are fighting at the top-most level, but how do they feel? What is the museum culture in Africa?” For the conversation to move forward, such matters need to be considered, Ezeluomba said. And on top of creating infrastructure and architecture, it’s important for institutions to consider how to “sustain that with our knowledge and understanding of maintenance culture.”
Nzewi called for the creation of an open-source database of “all objects in Western institutions, both public and private, and country by country.” Readily accessible information would allow institutions and independent researchers “to determine the trajectories of objects,” he said. And echoing Fromont, he added that objects of the kind he works with should be viewed as assets “in the same way Hollywood is an enormous economic resource for the United States and as most museums are for Western countries.” Adopting such a mind-set could lead to a number of scenarios, Nzewi said, including a prospective framework whereby Western institutions pay royalty fees—which could be drawn from entrance fees and image-usage fees—to the rightful owners of stolen artworks in their collections.
In instances when countries seek to repatriate objects without specific claims that can be made clear (as with the example in Benin), Nzewi suggested selling an object back to its country of origin at a “symbolic market value” to a public trust that could be created to ensure the object’s safekeeping and also allow for loans that could be used to invest in cultural endowments and to treat objects as national heritage.
“There is a burgeoning world of independent institutions in Africa that can benefit from such funds rather than the usual recourse to European foundations,” Nzewi said. “The funds would have well-respected juries that change every year, and people would have to apply for the money directly.” Nzewi envisions funds run professionally by management teams in a manner consistent with other endowments, perhaps taking the form of partnerships between various national ministries of culture with a body like UNESCO—to provide a “check and balance in managing the fund.”
Such a model could help develop cultural infrastructure in the absence of state involvement in certain African countries. “It will help to stem the absence of sustainability that plagues most of these initiatives and curtail the over-reliance on Western funding,” Nzewi said. “We must curb the African dependency syndrome, and this could be one way to do that, if there is transparency and sincerity.”
Since French President Emmanuel Macron pushed questions of restitution and repatriation to the fore in the West just two years ago, the conversation has intensified. But as Reed, the MFA Boston’s curator for provenance, pointed out, much of the debate has been centered in Europe, where museums are typically government-owned. In the United States, where most museums are privately run and funded, guidelines might need to come from outside bodies such as the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors. “I would imagine that, for American museums, any guidance on this issue is going to come from one of these professional organizations and not necessarily on a museum-by-museum basis,” Reed said. “Not to let us off the hook, but I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point yet where we’re having those sorts of conversations.”
In the meantime, institutions such as the Fowler Museum are focusing internal efforts to establish guidelines for what they hold in their collections. Through their current Mellon-funded research initiative—which includes an advisory committee drawn from local and regional scholars as well as community stakeholders—the museum’s director and curators said they hope to continue learning and, in the process, help answer a question hanging heavy on their minds: “What does it mean to have a collection of sub-Saharan African art formed by a British industrialist in Los Angeles in the 21st century?”