Kwame Opoku – APPEAL TO OPEN GERMAN MUSEUMS’ INVENTORIES ON AFRICAN OBJECTS.

Readers may recall that we have often called on European museums to reveal the number of looted African artefacts they have in their museums and depots. We have often pointed out that without knowledge of the African artefacts Europeans hold, most African peoples would not be able to formulate any demands for restitution. The identification of objects and their locations are indispensable for any reasonable demand for restitution. Yet European museums keep saying they have not received any demand for restitution from African States and peoples whilst at the same time refusing to tell us what looted objects they hold.

One is amazed to realize that despite all the recent discussions on restitution of African artefacts and the interest in the subject created by the famous Ouagadougou Declaration of President Emmanuel Macron on 28 November 2017 and the ground-breaking report of Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy,

European museums and other institutions have not yet opened their books to all those who want to carry on research on African artefacts and culture. What then is the use of the various declarations by European Ministers and others about their willingness to cooperate with Africans and their willingness to restitute looted African artefacts? What about all the expressed desires for circulation and exchange of artefacts? What is one to make of the declarations about ‘shared heritage’ when they are not willing to share information with Africans by given access to their inventories and archives on African artefacts? Europeans seem determined to keep the upper hand in all situations. But can one blame them alone in the face of complacent African ruling classes that have not learnt anything from slavery and colonialism and seem only too ready to comply with the wishes of the West which coincide with their short-term interests but far away from the wishes of the fathers and mothers of African Independence and of their peoples?.

Now a group of internationally acclaimed anthropologists, archaeologists, artists, art historians, historians, jurists, philosophers, political scientists, writers and other scholars, have signed a petition published below, requesting the German authorities to open finally their inventories and archives of the African objects they have in their museums and other institutions.They ‘demand that public museums and their supervisory authorities, municipalities, federal states and the federal government make the inventories of African objects in their respective collections available worldwide as quickly as possible’.

https://www.toncremers.nl/kwame-opoku-appeal-to-open-german-museums-inventories-on-african-objects/