French museums are nonetheless studying the origins of some 90,000 African objects in their archives. Most — 79,000 — are in the Quai Branly museum in Paris.
The task is “titanic and exhilarating”, said Emilie Salaberry, head of the Angouleme Museum, which houses around 5,000 African objects. “It’s turned upside down how we understand our collections,” she told AFP.
Identifying an object’s provenance is becoming central to museum work, but tracking down the necessary information is hard and time-consuming.
France’s Army Museum began its inventory in 2012 but has only been able to study around a quarter of its 2,248 African pieces.
To ease the cost burden, the Aquitaine Museum in Bordeaux, which has 2,500 African objects, is pooling resources with other organisations, including museums in Gabon and Cameroon.
The restitution effort in France has stalled, and in March 2024 the government indefinitely postponed a bill authorising the return of African and other cultural artefacts following right-wing resistance in the Senate.
