Mwazulu Diyabanza | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza |
| Occupation | Pan-African political activist |
| Known for | Removal of colonial-era cultural artefacts from European museums |
Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza is a Congolese pan-African political activist. He is best known for his support of cultural restitution and the removal of African artefacts from European museums obtained during colonisation.
Diyabanza was born in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but fled to France as a political refugee. As of 2024 [update] , he is 45 years old. [1] He divides his time between France and Togo. [2]
Diyabanza says his family were royalty on his mother's side, dating back to the 15th century, and that his grandfather, governor of Mpangu province in the Kingdom of Kongo, was in charge in absence of the king. He says that during the tenure of his grandfather, Europeans arrived and stole artefacts, including a hat made from multiple animal skins, an intricate cane, a copper bracelet, and a leopard skin worn in rituals. [3]
Diyabanza is the head of a pan-Africanist movement called Yanka Nku (Unité Dignité Courage, or Unity, Dignity and Courage). [4] [5] He also founded the Front Multiculturel Anti-Spoliation (FMAS, or the Multicultural Front Against Pillaging), which aims to unite the world's indigenous peoples with what he calls their plundered heritage on display in European museums. [4] He also campaigns against the use of the CFA franc currency in West and Central Africa. [2]
In June 2020, Diyabanza and several others entered the Quai Branly museum in Paris, which has around 70,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa. [6] They took a 19th-century funeral post of the Bari people; police recovered the object and held Diyabanza in custody for three days. A judge fined him €1,000 for attempted theft. [4] [7] Diyabanza protested that his actions were "part of a protest rather than an attempted theft". [8] The five activists he worked with faced up to ten years in prison and a fine of €150,000 each; [9] four of them were eventually given fines of €250 to €1000 each but avoided prison. [10]
A month later, in Marseille, Diyabanza tried to remove an ivory spear from the Museum of African, Oceanian and Native American Art (MAAOA). Charges were brought against him but he was acquitted in court. [4] [11] He was ordered to pay the Louvre €5,000 and a deferred prison term in Paris for removing an object from a display case in the museum. [12] [13] The museum claimed that Diyabanza had "tarnished its image because (his) action had an international and world-media echo". [14]
In September 2020 he removed a Congolese funerary statue from the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal. In January the following year, he was given a two-month suspended sentence and a €250 fine, including two years probation. Two women who filmed the event and two men who assisted Diyabanza in removing the object were each fined €100 and given one-month suspended prison sentences and two years probation, and all five were banned from entering the museum for three years. [15] Diyabanza believes that when he was at the museum, he saw a bracelet belonging to his grandfather, but did not take it as it was protected by a glass case. [3]
The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa,Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French kings.
A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying and/or preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Museums host a much wider range of objects than a library, and usually focus on a specific theme, such as the arts, science, natural history or local history. Public museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often tourist attractions, and many attract large numbers of visitors from outside their host country, with the most visited museums in the world attracting millions of visitors annually.
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Vandalism of art is intentional damage of an artwork. The object, usually exhibited in public, becomes damaged as a result of the act, and remains in place right after the act. This may distinguish it from art destruction and iconoclasm, where it may be wholly destroyed and removed, and art theft, or looting.
Some African objects had been collected by Europeans for centuries, and there had been industries producing some types, especially carvings in ivory, for European markets in some coastal regions. Between 1890 and 1918 the volume of objects greatly increased as Western colonial expansion in Africa led to the removal of many pieces of sub-Saharan African art that were subsequently brought to Europe and displayed. These objects entered the collections of natural history museums, art museums and private collections in Europe and the United States. About 90% of Africa's cultural heritage is believed to be located in Europe, according to French art historians.
The Gurlitt Collection was a collection of around 1,500 art works inherited by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of one of Hitler's official art dealers, Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956), and which was found to have contained several artworks looted from Jews by the Nazis.
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The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics is a report written by Senegalese academic and writer Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy, first published online in November 2018 in a French original version and an authorised English translation.
The Napoleonic looting of art was a series of confiscations of artworks and precious objects carried out by the French Army or French officials in the conquered territories of the French Republic and Empire, including the Italian Peninsula, Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries, and Central Europe. The looting began around 1794 and continued through Napoleon I's rule of France, until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ordered the restitution of the works.
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The Benin Dialogue Group is a multi-lateral international collaborative working group that brings together delegates from Western museums with representatives of the Nigerian Government, the Royal Court of Benin, and the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Its aims are cooperation between museums possessing Nigerian cultural heritage and the creation of a permanent display in Benin City, in particular the Benin Bronzes.
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