June 28, 2019

Kenya creates a database to show just where its stolen cultural artefacts are

located:	United Kingdom, Greece, Kenya, Benin, France, Senegal
editor:	Gurmeet Singh

The clock room is my favourite. If you enter the museum through the front (past the airport-like security checks), take the stairs on the left, and then enter the first room right opposite, you’ll be there. The room is itself about thirty metres long and contains hundreds of timepieces, from about the year 1,300 AD to the present day. It’s a witty and engaging exhibition, and possibly the most innocent in the entire museum. Why do I say innocent? Nearly every other room in this vast building contains objects which were plundered in some way.

Perhaps it’s unfair to single the British Museum out. It’s well known that as pleasant and edifying a day out to the museum can be, the very idea of a public archive of cultural artefacts is a problematic one. Not only are many major museums products of colonial histories, but they also continue to reproduce colonial stereotypes and power relations. A typical answer to the question, “why don’t you return objects to their place of origin?”, for example, might sound something like, “because we are responsible and the country from which these objects came cannot possibly care for them enough”.

In fact, The Guardian writes: “The authors of an influential report on colonial-era artefacts, which recommended a restitution programme to transfer hundreds of items from European institutions to Africa, have criticised the British Museum for acting like 'an ostrich with its head in the sand'”.

The report was co-written by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy, at the request of French President Emanuel Macron. It makes many recommendations, including granting restitution of objects to their countries of origin, including the Benin bronzes, which were stolen in an expedition in 1897.

The British Museum and other institutions have responded by saying that they would be willing to loan the objects back to countries, but not return them. Their justification for such an offer: “We believe the strength of [The British Museum’s] collection is its breadth and depth which allows millions of visitors an understanding of the cultures of the world and how they interconnect – whether through trade, migration, conquest, or peaceful exchange”, said a spokesman.

So we have a newer, blander capitalist justification for keeping and benefiting from stolen property: it’s easier for visitors to see all this stolen stuff in one place. A brazen answer, to say the least.

Countries which have lost their artefacts have for decades tried to pressure museums to return them. But not all countries have prioritised such measures. Where Greece has for decades lobbied the U.K. to return its Parthenon Marbles, Kenya has only recently joined the fight for the return of its artefacts. This is Africa writes: “The International Inventories Programme (IIP) is a research project undertaken by the National Museums of Kenya, the Nairobi-based arts collective The Nest and the German social enterprise Shift."

"This international research and database project is investigating a collection of Kenyan objects being held in cultural institutions across the globe. Funded by the German cultural centre in Kenya, the Goethe Institute, the programme seeks to create a first-of-its-kind inventory of Kenyan artefacts held in public institutions abroad. Once the objects are identified in museums in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S., the aim is to get these works to Kenya and to feature them in permanent or temporary exhibitions.”

Databases such as this may actually be more effective in the long-run than government lobbying. If the wider public is able to access a database that shows which objects were wrongfully acquired and where they currently reside, it might do more to raise awareness of the issue than elite-level political discussion. The U.K. has a positive soft-power reputation around the world, (as well as a reputation for brutal invasion); how much it could enhance the former by acts of grace and generosity by returning permanently the objects it wrongfully holds.

Nevertheless, I insist you all visit the clock room.