Academy under Trees: Europe’s Evolving Approach to Collection Items from Colonial Contexts

As part of this year’s digital “Academy under Trees”, realised in cooperation with Dialogues en humanité, experts and interested people from culture, science, civil society, media, politics and administration from various European and African countries discussed the topic of “Europe’s Evolving Approach to Collection Items from Colonial Contexts”.

The event opened with introductory speeches by Marie-Cécile Zinsou (Fondation Zinsou) and Jean-Marc Ayrault (Foundation for the Memory of Slavery), who in 2016, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, had to cancel Benin's restitution claims because restitution is not possible under French law. Both explained how and why an exceptional law has since been passed in France allowing the return of some objects to Benin and Senegal. Ms Zinsou described how the mobilisation of Beninese youth had contributed to this development.

In the agoras that followed, Maureen Murphy (University Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne) for France, Marc-André Renold (University of Geneva) for Switzerland, Mireille-Tsheusi Robert (Bamko) for Belgium, Wayne Modest (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen) for the Netherlands, Inés de Castro (Linden-Museum) for Germany and Dan Hicks (University of Oxford) for the United Kingdom reported on the state of the public debate in their respective countries.

The second part of the event began with the artistic performance of meLê yamomo who presented excerpts from “Echoing Europe - Postcolonial Reverberations”, and culminated in a lively panel discussion with Didier Claes (Galerie Didier Claes), Larissa Förster (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste) and Sonia Lawson (Palais de Lomé).

Here you can find the recording of the introductory speeches with English translation. Here you can find the recording of the panel discussion with English translation.

Here you will find an online publication with contributions from Benin, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium.

Partnerzy: Dialogues en humanité, Lyon

Instytucje finansujące: Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb); ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius