Marjorie Och, Professor of Art History, UMW, ARTH 315 & 317: Art Museum Studies
The contested sale of African art went ahead. It is not yet known who acquired the Igbo statues above. Professor Chika Okek-Aggulu of Princeton University wrote a letter of protest to Christie’s prior to the June 29 sale of African, Oceanic, and North American art.
A Benin sculpture is facing the auction block.
General information about the sale of this particular object can be found at Christie’s catalogue for this sale of art from Africa, Oceania, and North America.
This article by Erin Thompson gives you some context for the sale on June 29, 2020.
Follow-up June 30: The link to the catalogue does not work and this bronze does not appear among the objects in the sale.
How will this develop at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris? Read more in Fayah Nayeri’s New York Times article of June 5, 2020.
On the museum’s website you can link to a variety of tours to explore their collections.
You can also explore collections from places around the globe from the map.
“A proposed law would mobilize a national strategy to help Indigenous communities reclaim cultural heritage objects at home and abroad.”
A mask of the Kwakiutl, a native American clan on the West coast of Canada on display in the Humboldt Box museum in Berlin. Photo: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images.
An additional article on the Cranmer Potlatch of 1921 from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, June 8, 2018. That article closes with the following important questions:
Ask yourself:
Question 1:
What would you want to pass down to future generations?
Question 2:
What kind of cultural heritage is important to you and your community?
Question 3:
What role can museums play to help preserve and protect heritage?
“These items are not for sale.”
“In one scene, the blockbuster superhero movie touches on issues of provenance, repatriation, diversity, representation, and other debates currently shaping institutional practices.” Lise Ragbir, Hyperallergic, March 20, 2018.
“A terror plot targeting the British Museum was recently thwarted, but the reasons why it became a target in the first place go far beyond the current political climate.” Erin L. Thompson, Hyperallergic, June 11, 2018.
