Musée des civilizations noires

Entrance to the Musée civilizations noires Dakar, 2019

The Musée des civilizations noires , in English "Museum of Black Civilizations", is an ethnological and art history museum that opened on December 6, 2018 in the Senegalese capital Dakar .

Geographical location

The museum is part of the newly created cultural park in Dakar, which is located in the vicinity of the port district in the Dakar Plateau district and to which, in addition to the museum, the Great National Theater, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Library with the National Archives, the University of Fine Arts, the Architecture school and the music palace belong.

history

The first idea for a museum of all black civilizations and cultures came about as part of the first Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (World Festival of Black Arts) in Dakar in 1966. Senegal's first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor , advocated the idea of founding a pan-African museum to make African cultural assets visible after centuries of European colonization.

Only 45 years later, under the government of President Abdoulaye Wade , the plans became more concrete. Thanks to good economic and diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, Wade was able to secure Chinese funding of 34.6 million US dollars for the museum. The foundation stone for the building by Wade took place on December 21, 2011 in the presence of the Chinese ambassador.

The Beijing Institute of Architecture designed the museum and the Shanghai Construction Group carried out the construction . Originally a construction period of 28 months was planned, but could not be kept; between 2013 and 2015, construction work was interrupted due to the change in political power from Wade to his successor Sall. After an opening was planned for November 2016, this was delayed again, so that the museum could only be opened on December 6, 2018 under Wade's successor Macky Sall . It was not open to the public until a month after the official opening.

concept

The building is modeled on the traditional round huts in southern Senegal. It has a floor space of over 14,000 square meters and a capacity of up to 18,000 exhibits. When it opened, however, only two of the three floors were in use.

The museum claims to “decolonize” African knowledge under museum director Hamady Bocoum, archaeologist and researcher of the Cheikh Anta Diop University , and to show artifacts and exhibits from the whole of Africa and the diaspora. The explanatory remarks on the story are written from a decidedly Afrocentric perspective. The museum's first exhibitions show works of art from Mali and Burkina Faso, Cuba and Haiti. Other works by the diaspora from Brazil and the USA can also be seen.

In the course of the opening, the Senegalese state demanded from France all works of art that had been "stolen" during the colonization and that were in the holdings of the French state museums. This demand for restitution is related to the report on the restitution of African cultural assets that the French cultural historian Bénédicte Savoy and the Senegalese scholar Felwin Sarr wrote in November 2018 on behalf of the French President.