France is finally making public its long-awaited policy on the dossier responsible for the restitution of cultural property. The government will release tomorrow an 85-page report on the subject by Jean-Luc Martinez, former director of the Louvre. The report was commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and the government has already implemented some of its recommendations, including a bill on Nazi-looted art, which will be debated in the Senate on May 23.
And two more laws will be passed in the coming months, according to Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak. One could apply to the articles of the former colonies of the Western empires, which the report defines in global terms, rather than to Africa and its former French dominions. The other concerns human remains.
Martinez tells art diary that his report recommends studying the restitution claims of eight African countries to establish a “restitution criterion”. Rather than relying on an ideological or moral point of view, he says he wants to adopt a “pragmatic approach in order to define a framework policy for restitutions”.
He proposed two main criteria as the basis for restitutions: “illegality and illegitimacy”. For example, under French law at the time of the French colonial invasion of Algeria in the early 19th century, weapons could be legally seized from an enemy, but cultural property must be returned after battle. Thus the books and clothes of the rebel leader Abdelkader ibn Muhieddine (commonly known as Abdelkader) should have been returned to him upon his surrender, rendering their status in France “illegitimate”.
Likewise, if an officer handed over looted property to a French museum, as was the case with many objects looted from the Kingdom of Benin, the donation should be considered “illegal because such personal spoils of war are not allowed”. A key recommendation of the report is that restitution requests be studied by a bilateral scientific commission which will make a public opinion before the final decision of the French courts.
Martinez says that despite curators’ apprehensions, very few works held by French museums will fall under these definitions. “Of the 85,000 objects examined by the Quai Branly museum in Paris, only 300 pose a problem and could correspond to these criteria”. His report also stresses that requests for restitution must come from the State, which must, in turn, ensure that the works are well preserved and displayed after their restitution.
The report also suggests facilitating restitutions to foreign nations, once the criteria for their return have been met. Currently, restitutions of any kind must be approved by special laws, which can take years. The law already introduced on Nazi-looted works of art, according to Martinez’s report, will also facilitate their alienation and extends the definition of looted art beyond the time and space of the German occupation of France, and in the period 1933-1945 across Europe.
The report comes nearly six years after Macron publicly called for the “return of African heritage” during a state visit to Burkina Faso. And for four and a half years, academics Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr have been pleading for systematic restitution to African countries. Since then, the issue has been downplayed somewhat, but it remains a sensitive topic.
Some Parisian museums, such as the Quai Branly, the Musée de l’Homme or the Musée de l’Armée, have discreetly created new departments in recent years to research the provenance of their collections during the French colonial period, with the contribution of African scholars and conservatives. Martinez has closely followed these initiatives and has also considered the position of other European nations as well as consultations with the African states concerned. Its report provides the first synthesis of restitution policies across Europe. It underlines the specificity of French public collections, considered inalienable forever.
“They don’t belong to the state, they belong to the nation, and the state is just their guardian,” he says. “This is the big difference between France and other Western countries. where each museum can decide these issues for itself.” Martinez concludes his report by proposing that European and African countries establish a common framework for restitutions, such as the 1998 Washington Principles on Looted Art, and create a funds to help this new cooperation.
