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Two religious congregations in France that hold important collections of African art are discerning how they can best share these objects with the countries of origin
By Sabine Gignoux | Benin
The Society of African Missions (SMA) has a remarkable collection of African art at their provincial house in Lyon, France.
And among them is the Emblem of Agadja, the fifth king of Abomey (present-day Benin).
It is a caravel, made of hammered silver, decorated with three sails and two small anchors hanging under its hull.
It evokes the 18th century slave trade Agadja engaged in with Westerners via the port of Ouidah in the Gulf of Guinea.
The precious vessel could have crowned an assen in the 19th century, a ritual object perpetuating the link with this royal ancestor.
26 objects returned to Benin
In spite of the emblem's painful symbolism, could Benin's government demand it be returned to its country?
In fact, leaders of the West African nation have sought to recover artworks that were carried away to Europe and elsewhere.
After a law that was passed in France last December, the Musée du Quai-Branly in Paris was forced to return 26 objects from the 1892 sack of the Royal Palace of Abomey.
"The Church is also concerned," said Louis-Georges Tin, former president of the Representative Council of France's Black Associations.
"Most of the objects taken to the West by missionaries were brought in a delicate context," he told La Croix.
"Independent researchers must be able to study them. And if some were stolen, they must be returned. This requires a case-by-case examination," he said.
Missionary congregations are not opposed to this.
"What has been looted, especially in the context of military looting, must be returned," said Father François du Penhoat, French provincial of the SMA.
Benin's Minister of Culture, Ange N'Koué, asked to meet with him in 2016 to discuss the objects preserved by the missionary congregation.
The provincial had promised to go see him in Cotonou, but the N'Koué was replaced, and the new cultural minister never followed up.
"This affair forced us to clarify the provenance of certain objects," the SMA provincial admitted.
Collection conditions difficult to trace
Father Pierre Boutin, who has scoured the archives, said that the case of the Royal Emblem of Agadja is "problematic".
There is nothing that sheds light on the conditions under which it was acquired.
The SMA also have a seal from the reign of King Béhanzin, considered the 11th king of Dahomey.
Father Boutin said it was "made in Great Britain and may have been given to the king by English diplomats".
"According to an oral tradition of the SMA, the king offered the seal to Father Alexandre Dorgère," Boutin said.
Béhanzin had taken Dorgére hostage in 1890 to use him as an intermediary in negotiations with the French government.
"There is still a huge amount of work to be done in the mission archives," noted Laurick Zerbini, lecturer in the history of African art at the University Lumière-Lyon 2.
"We will surely come up against gaps, but we must try to establish the origins and recover this information before possibly also the objects themselves," she said.
Laurick pointed out that European missionaries had diverse motives for bringing back art from Africa.
Many exhibited these pieces in the West to serve as missionary propaganda beginning at the end of the 19th century, principally to denounce supposedly obscure beliefs from which Africa should be liberated.
Others were motivated by sincere anthropological interests. And they also brought back precious notes, drawings, photographs and so forth
This was the case with Father Henri-Marie-Louis-Paul Trilles (1866-1949), a Spiritan Missionary who explored the lands of the Fang people in Gabon and brought back many geographical and ethnographic observations and artefacts.
He sold two boxes of objects to the Museum of Ethnography in Neufchâtel, Switzerland, in 1901 and 1907.
The first one contained about a hundred pieces and fetched him 200 gold francs!
The crate contained human skulls and a striking Byeri reliquary head, which has become the museum's icon.
"A crude and hideous statue, carved with great blows of an ax out of a shapeless trunk of black wood," Father Trilles wrote at the time.
"It would be necessary to find patrons to finance the circulation of these objects"
Under what conditions did this missionary and others obtain these sacred reliquaries, especially when they still contained the skulls of ancestors?
"Father Trilles may have received them as a gift following the conversion of a lineage chief, as was the case for Pastor Grébert, who donated a reliquary piece to the Neuchâtel museum," said ethnologist Louis Perrois, a specialist in Gabon.
So, should we expect Gabon to demand that these reliquaries be returned?
So far it has not sent any formal request to France.
But other countries -- like Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Chad, Mali and Madagascar -- have all made restitution claims since 2019.
"Gabon first needs well-trained conservators. UNESCO has put in place the first steps in this direction," said Perrois.
"It is also necessary to find patrons to finance the circulation of these objects whose history is today shared between Africa and the West," the ethnologist pointed out.
"The future lies in exchanges and collaboration"
The Spiritans have several Byeris guardian figures of the Fang in their collection.
Their only statue containing small bones -- of which it is not known whether they are of human or animal origin -- is a reliquary of the Ambete people of Gabon or Congo.
"In 2019, the director of the Libreville museum came to see the new museum we opened in Allex in the (southeastern French department of) Drôme," said Father François Nicolas.
"He was not asking for any restitution. Instead, he suggested that we help him restore objects that he would lend us," the missionary said.
He now sees the objects in his museum as "ambassadors".
"Recalling them back to Africa would mean that we are at war. For me, the future is rather in exchanges and collaboration," Nicolas argued.
Father Marc Botzung, provincial superior of the Spiritans in France, said the congregation has "2,600 members throughout the world, mostly Africans".
And he'd like "to be able to send these works to the universities of the congregation in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania".
The SMA in Lyon decided to close its African museum in 2017, under pressure from its many members who live in Africa.
"For me, who was trained in traditional religion before converting to Christianity, the Lyon museum was like a sanctuary. Different cults were found there, disturbingly associated," said Father Jean-Paul Katcha, from Togo, who is in charge of the collections.
The SMA has replaced the museum's Western model with a Crossroads of African Cultures.
Its director, Father Basil Soyoyé, organized a forum in 2019 in Lomé on intra-African cultural cooperation and the restitution of cultural property.
He invited directors of heritage institutions from Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso and Benin.
"We made it clear that we are in favor of exchanging objects from our collections with Africa, if possible in exhibitions involving local populations, especially young people," the missionary said.
"We would also like them to circulate between different countries, because the Sénoufo masks, for example, are of interest as much to Côte d'Ivoire as to Burkina Faso and Mali," he noted.
The academic Laurick Zerbini is convinced this is the way to proceed.
"As long as there is no move towards greater circulation of African pieces held in the West, questions of restitution will arise."
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