PARIS: In a decision with potential ramifications across European museums, France is displaying 26 looted colonial-era artifacts for one last time before returning them home to Benin.

The wooden anthropomorphic statues, royal thrones and sacred altars were pilfered by the French army in the 19th century from western Africa. The French will have a final glimpse of the objects, from the collection known as the Abomey Treasures, in the Muse du quai BranlyJacques Chirac from Tuesday through Sunday.

President Emmanuel Macron suggested that France now needed to right the wrongs of the past, making a landmark speech in 2017 in which he said he can no longer accept “that a large part of many African countries cultural heritage lies in France. It laid down a roadmap for the return of the royal treasures taken during the era of empire and colony.

So far, however, France has only turned over one item a storied sword handed to the Army Museum in Senegal. And the 26 works going to Benin represent a tiny handful of the more than 90,000 artifacts from sub-Saharan Africa alone held in French museums.

Yet critics of such moves including London’s British Museum, in a decades-long tug-of-war with the Greek government over a restitution of the Elgin Marbles argue that it will open the floodgates to emptying Western museums of their collections. Many are made up of objects acquired, or stolen, during colonial times.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2021