21.12.21BUSUU. READING.  LESSON 18

Good to go: restitution of art

A new era for Western museums may be at hand. This week a French report went further than any before it in advocating that African treasures in museums should be returned to their countries of origin. The paper, by a French art historian and a Senegalese economist and writer, urges museums to return all objects that arrived from French colonies between the late 1800s and 1960 because they would have been removed without consent if the country asks for them. France has 90,000 African objects, including 70,000 in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. The advice will cause ripples beyond France. More demands are expected, especially of 

the British Museum, 

the Victoria & Albert Museum and 

the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. 

The latter is due to reopen on December 9th after a five-year restructuring of the collection amassed during King Leopold II’s private rule over Congo between 1865 and 1908.