Africa’s Struggle for its Art
- Title
- Africa’s Struggle for its Art
- Creator
- Bénédicte Savoy
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Date
- 2022
- Description
-
A major history of how African nations, starting in the 1960s, sought to reclaim artefacts stolen by Western colonial powers, by one of the world’s foremost experts on restitution and cultural heritage.
Shortly after 1960, when eighteen former colonies in Africa gained independence, a movement to pursue repatriation of artefacts stolen by former colonial powers was spearheaded by African intellectual and political classes. Savoy looks at pivotal events, including the watershed speech delivered at the United Nations General Assembly by Zaire’s president, which started the debate regarding restitution of colonial-era assets and resulted in the first UN resolution on the subject. She examines how German museums tried to withhold information about their inventory and how the British Museum Act, which protected British collections, came under fire in the House of Lords, but a proposed amendment to the act did not prevail. Savoy concludes in the mid-1980s, when African nations enacted the first laws focusing on the protection of their cultural heritage.