On April 27, France issued a long-awaited communiqué report to repatriation. French President Emmanuel Macron commissioned former Louvre museum director Jean-Luc Martinez to create the document in 2021, the same year Martinez resigned from his post at the Parisian institution. Since then, it has come to light that the Louvre outpost in Abu Dhabi was involved in the infamous looting ring that smuggled items from major collectors and institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Martinez has been accused with complicity in fraud and concealment of the origin of the works, and the Court of Appeal of Paris confirmed the charges as recently as February 2023.
While the 85-page document poses a host of seemingly common-sense suggestions, it marks an important step because France lacks a legal framework allowing its national collections to alienate objects. Hyper-specific laws must be passed for works of art to be repatriated. The UK has similar rules – for example, a law would have to be passed to allow the heated debate Parthenon marbles return to Greece.
In 2017, Macron made a breakthrough promise create a framework for the permanent or temporary restitution of African heritage within five years. Macron commissioned Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy to create a 2018 report on the subject. Two years later, France pass a law that allowed the return of 27 objects to Benin and Senegal. Now in 2023, these works of art and a 19th century Senegalese saber are the only ones to have been repatriated since Macron made his big promise.
Martinez’s new report recommends the creation of far-reaching doctrines to enable the repatriation of three types of works of art: cultural heritage, human remains and objects looted from the Nazi era. He notes that repatriation has always been used as a diplomatic tool and instead calls for an objective framework. It also suggests the notion of “cultural partnership” which does not necessarily establish legal ownership, but rather the circulation of objects between their country of origin and France.
The report recommends a three-year delay between the date of the application and the final declaration and describes the eligibility requirements. For example, a request must identify a specific work; the object must not be claimed by another nation and the claim cannot be accompanied by a request for monetary reparations.
The document also mandates the repatriation of objects obtained under duress – either during wartime or during Nazi occupation – and urges museums to examine their collections to identify such works.
Notably, the report explicitly describes what constitutes a valid request for the return of human remains. The identity of the person must be known and this person must have died after the year 1500, the document states, arguing that beyond this year “we all have the same ancestors”, a quote from the president of the National Museum of natural history of France, Bruno David.
The document calls for the creation of an Africa-Europe fund to focus specifically on the subject of African cultural heritage but suggests that the new legal framework extends beyond the perimeter of France and its former colonies in Africa. However, the report specifically mentions these countries and includes a section detailing how countries may differ in their requests for repatriation and how ongoing wars in these countries could delay repatriation.
Around 90% of African cultural heritage objects are estimated to be in Europe. The Quai Branly Museum in Paris holds at least 70,000 works of sub-Saharan Africa alone.
