When French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on November 28, 2017, he announced his plans to temporarily or permanently return French state-owned African cultural possessions to their original source nations (Macron 2017). Museums with African art collections were sent into a tailspin as heated debates ignited across the world following the speech. Macron subsequently engaged the Senegalese economist and philosopher Felwine Sarr and art historian Bénédicte Savoy to write a formal report with restitution recommendations. Released in 2018, their report concluded that all cultural possessions in French museums acquired before 1960 without evidence of full consent from their original owners or guardians should be returned to Africa (Sarr and Savoy 2018),1 “essentially advocating the unconditional and comprehensive return of all such possessions” (Plankensteiner 2019: 357). Activists, philosophers, scholars, and museum professionals voiced varying, and often more nuanced, positions...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Winter 2020
October 01 2020
A Propos Macron and the Restitution of African Arts: A German Case Study
Barbara Thompson
Barbara Thompson
Barbara Thompson has workled as a consultant with the African ceramics collection of His Royal Highness Franz, Duke of Bavaria since receiving her PhD in African art history from the University of Iowa in 1999. She has taught an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa, served as curator of African, Native American, and Oceanic arts at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and at the Cantor Art Center, Stanford University. She has also organized over forty exhibitions and published internationally on global arts, often focusing on the cross-over between historical and contemporary practices. Since returning to her birthplace in Hawaii in 2014, she works as an independent art historian, curator, and consultant. bthompson@africanartresearch.com
Search for other works by this author on:
Barbara Thompson
Barbara Thompson has workled as a consultant with the African ceramics collection of His Royal Highness Franz, Duke of Bavaria since receiving her PhD in African art history from the University of Iowa in 1999. She has taught an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa, served as curator of African, Native American, and Oceanic arts at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and at the Cantor Art Center, Stanford University. She has also organized over forty exhibitions and published internationally on global arts, often focusing on the cross-over between historical and contemporary practices. Since returning to her birthplace in Hawaii in 2014, she works as an independent art historian, curator, and consultant. bthompson@africanartresearch.com
Online ISSN: 1937-2108
Print ISSN: 0001-9933
© 2020 by the Regents of the University of California.
2020
The Regents of the University of California
African Arts (2020) 53 (4): 1–7.
Citation
Barbara Thompson; A Propos Macron and the Restitution of African Arts: A German Case Study. African Arts 2020; 53 (4): 1–7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00545
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.
Sign in via your Institution
Sign in via your InstitutionEmail alerts
Advertisement
Cited By
Related Articles
Avant-Propos: Bernard Tschumi in Conversation with Enrique Walker
Grey Room (October,2004)
Computer-Based Training of Stimulus Detection Improves Color and Simple Pattern Recognition in the Defective Field of Hemianopic Subjects
J Cogn Neurosci (November,2000)
Negotiating Adaptation: Norm Selection and Hybridization in International Climate Negotiations
Global Environmental Politics (November,2012)
Double Objects Again
Linguistic Inquiry (January,2004)
Related Book Chapters
Introduction: Infrastructural Restitution
Media Ruins: Cambodian Postwar Media Reconstruction and the Geopolitics of Technology