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“And I am left thinking that the "Enlightenment principles on which public museums in the United States were established" have perhaps contributed to the irreversible destruction of our universal, or cosmopolitan, cultural heritage”.

David Gill, Collecting Antiquities and Enlightenment Principles (1)

…The exhibition, Benin: Kings and Rituals Court Arts from Nigeria, goes to the Art Institute of Chicago (A.I.C.) from July 10 - September 21, 2008 as the final station of this travelling exhibition which, starting in Vienna, generated debates about restitution of stolen art, went to Paris and Berlin. It is to be noted that the exhibition which is the biggest ever held on Benin art will not be seen in Nigeria. It goes next to Chicago. But what kind of institution is the Art Institute of Chicago?

The Art Institute of Chicago was established in 1879 as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and changed to its present name in 1882. The museum is well-known for its collection of European Impressionist art works and American art. Although the museum has some excellent African art works, it is not famous/infamous for its African collection. It has some Benin objects too but not on the same scale as the British Museum, London, and the Ethnology Museum, Berlin. Indeed, interest in African art has surprisingly not always been very strong in a museum in a city with a large African-American population that has a long history of subjection to the most incredible racial segregation and discrimination. Interest in African art in the museum has reflected interest in Africa, largely due to political changes and improvement in race relations.

According to Kathleen Berzock's excellent study, “African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago” African art objects used to be in the Children's Museum: “The Children's Museum was the only place African art could be found at the Art Institute before the 1950s when a department devoted to the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas was developed”. (2)

The Children's Museum was aimed at the education of children and had drawings, posters, illustrated books and dolls. Water colour, wood and ivory carvings were also available to introduce children to artistic techniques. A large variety of dolls were also available in the museum. “The Negro in Art Week”, devoted to African-American art, was also held at the Children's Museum in 1927. The placement of African art in the Children's Museum was not accidental:
“While the very presence of African art in the Art Institute suggested interest in the works' aesthetic dimensions, its sole placement in the Children's Museum implied that it was not considered to be equal in merit or significance to art on view in the main galleries. This was not the case with works from the United States, Europe and Japan, which were exhibited in both locations. The underlying supposition was that African art appealed to less mature sensibilities and, further, that the work of its artists was comparable to that of children. Thus, while admitted into the Art Institute's hallowed halls, African art was expected to be kept in its separate and unequal place, an attitude which continued well into the 1940s. Despite such sentiments, interest in African and other so-called primitive art was growing among the Western Modernist avant-garde.” (3)

When a Benin plaque was acquired by the museum in 1933, the person responsible for African art at the museum stated that the acquisition “brings to our attention the amazing discoveries of the year 1897, when for the first time the technical skill and achievements of this now decadent civilization were brought before the civilized world”. (4)

In 1957, the museum created a Department of Primitive Art which was responsible for the permanent art collections of African, Oceanic and Amerindian Art. In 1980, the Department of Primitive Art was changed into Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas and in 1995 the department was renamed the Department of African and Amerindian Art. (5)

The various designations of the department to deal with African art are indicative, to some extent, of the changing attitudes to African art and social and racial relations. These changes tell an interesting story when one recalls that in talking about Africa, the Art Institute of Chicago leaves out, like Hegel and others, an important African country: Egypt. Egypt comes under the purview of the Department of Egyptian Art. In the 60's, 70's and 90's notable exhibitions were held at the Art Institute: “Traditional Arts of Africa's New Nations” (1961), “African Textiles and Decorative Arts” (1972), “Dogon Art from the Lester Wunderman Collection” (1975), “Gold of Africa” (1991), and “Baule: African Art/Western Eyes”(1998)

The history of African art in the Art Institute of Chicago demonstrates that African art has not been displayed or treated in the same way as art from other continents. Where then is the support for the argument of the “universalists” that there is a great advantage in having arts from cultures of the whole world under one roof? All cultures under one roof but with African culture in the Children's Museum on the assumption that Africans will never develop beyond the ability and intelligence of the average Euro-American child? Does this really help children to understand and appreciate other cultures?

What makes the Art Institute of Chicago very important, in the context of restitution, is less the objects found therein than the attitude of its present director, James Cuno. (6)

James Cuno, Director, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Philippe de Montebello, Director, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Neil MacGregor, Director, British Museum, London constitute a triumvirate which defends the so-called “universal museums.” Cuno is undoubtedly the most outspoken and vociferous spokesman for the supporters of the so-called “universal museums” and has written articles and books in support of their stand. (7)

He makes the most provocative and outrageous statements to defend the retention of stolen cultural objects found in the large museums, mostly acquired during the colonial period and in many ways as a direct result of the use of massive violence against countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania.

The most formal document of this group of museums is the infamous Declaration on the Value and Importance of the Universal Museums (2002) signed by 18 of the biggest museums in the world. (8)

It should be noted that the British Museum which instigated the whole joint effort in order to counterbalance the political pressure exerted by Greece because of the Parthenon Marbles, cunningly did not sign the declaration. Simply and briefly stated, these large museums have declared that they have no intention of restoring objects forcibly removed or stolen, to their countries of origin, despite several United Nations and UNESCO resolutions. (9)

In the Foreword to the catalogue to the Benin Exhibition, four co-operating museums, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, Ethnology Museum, Vienna, State Museums in Berlin, and the Art Institute of Chicago, have stated clearly they have no intention of returning any stolen objects, including the Benin bronzes and have advised Benin/Nigeria and the African countries to forget the past and to look ahead to the future. (10)

As part of his strategy to defend objects that are present illegally in Western museums, Cuno has rejected the idea that States have any ownership in archaeological objects found on their soil:

“Anthony Appiah said something wonderful in his book Cosmopolitanism. He says, Look we don't know who made these Nok sculptures, these ancient sculptures that are found today in Nigeria. We don't know if they were made for royalty or for one's ancestors or on speculation. But what we know for sure is that they weren't made for Nigeria. Because at the time there was no Nigeria.” (11)

Cuno has gone so far as to deny that there is any connection between ancient Egyptian civilization and present day Egypt or between ancient China and present-day Peoples Republic of China.

“It is a stretch of the imagination to link modern Egypt to ancient Egypt, modern Greece to ancient Greece, modern Rome to ancient Rome, and communist China to ancient China. Nonetheless, countries like Italy, Greece, Turkey, China, and many others have laws that make any antiquity found on their soil automatically the property of the state.“ (12)

"The people of modern-day Cairo do not speak the language of the ancient Egyptians, do not practice their religion, do not make their art, wear their dress, eat their food or play their music. All that can be said is that they occupy the same (actually less) stretch of the earth's geography”. (13)

Cuno also makes UNESCO responsible for destruction of cultural property: “In a 2006 essay in the New York Review of Books, the philosopher and Princeton professor Kwame Anthony Appiah argued that such laws have even destroyed antiquities. Soon after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, Appiah pointed out, it was a UNESCO treaty prohibiting the removal of antiquities from their country of origin that prevented concerned scholars from rescuing pre-Islamic artifacts before the Taliban, branding them idolatrous objects, destroyed them.”(14)

Such an absurd accusation should normally not deserve any comment but it comes from the director of one of the major museums in the Western world which claim to represent all cultures in their museums. He does not seem to be aware that UNESCO does not make the policies of States and that the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970) was in no way responsible for the policy of the government in the case he mentions. What can be said about that particular issue was that the Convention would not authorize a group of Western States or scholars to dispose of a cultural object the way they deem fit against the will of a government determined to pursue a policy of destruction, however deplorable that might be.

That the outrageous and provocative statements of Cuno are not simple slips of the tongue or of the pen is demonstrated by the statements in his forthcoming book in which he expresses similar views. Tom Flynn has correctly declared, after reviewing an excerpt from the forthcoming book:

“The UNESCO Convention has not failed. But no amount of international conventions and agreements can overcome the obstacle represented by bellicose developed economies imposing their will on weaker nations, which has become a signal factor in the rise of cultural heritage desecration.

Mr. Cuno, like many leading museum directors, is currently suffering from post-colonial tristesse — that melancholy condition which descends with the realisation that the great universal museum collections over which they preside are no longer able to maintain the upward growth curve that began during the imperial era. Get over it. Continued    Source: Kwame Opoku, Dr.

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