Graduate-Student Papers on Cultural Politics Seminar
Date and Time
Location
"Negotiating the Cultural Politics of Decolonization: Art, Sovereignty, and Restitution in Algeria and France"
Speaker:
Andrew Bellisari, Phd Candidate, Department of History, Harvard University.
Contact:
Ilana Freedman
ifreedman@g.harvard.edu
Chair:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies, Department of the Classics; Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Abstract:
In May 1962—two months before Algerian independence—French museum administrators removed over 300 works of art from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers and transported them, under military escort, to the Louvre in Paris. The artwork, however, no longer belonged to France. Under the terms of the Evian Accords it had become the official property of the Algerian state-to-be and the incoming nationalist government wanted it back. The fate of Algeria’s art would be negotiated for close to a decade before France returned nearly all of the artwork to the Fine Arts Museum in Algiers, where today it makes up one of the largest collections of European art in Africa. This talk will examine not only the French decision to act in contravention of the Evian Accords and the ensuing negotiations that took place between France and Algeria, but also the cultural complexities of post-colonial restitution. What does it mean for artwork produced by some of France’s most iconic artists—Monet, Delacroix, Courbet—to become the cultural property of a former colony? Moreover, what is at stake when a former colony demands the repatriation of artwork emblematic of the former colonizer, deeming it a valuable part of the nation’s cultural heritage? The negotiations undertaken to repatriate French art to Algeria expose the kinds of awkward cultural refashioning precipitated by the process of decolonization and epitomizes the lingering connections of colonial disentanglement that do not fit neatly into the common narrative of the “end of empire.”