Helping to Restore Stolen African Works

By Kim Thurler, Tufts Now

Two years in the past, Professor of Music Kwasi Ampene acquired an out-of-the blue e-mail from the curator of African artwork at UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Would Ampene, a famend skilled on the music and tradition of the Asante kingdom of West Africa, assist the museum return to the dominion antiquities stolen by the British throughout the Nineteenth-century Anglo-Asante wars?

The seven looted objects included gold decorations for the ankles, arms, and neck, a gold-embellished elephant tail whisk, and a chair of wooden and leather-based with metallic decorations. Years of analysis and his personal Ghanaian heritage had given Ampene a deep understanding of the significance of such objects in what he phrases the “historical past, coronary heart, and soul” of the Asante.

Nevertheless, he approached with care. “Given the historic dimension and feelings surrounding violence and pillage related to European colonization in Africa, I used to be initially cautious and measured in my response,” says Ampene. “I instructed myself, ‘This could possibly be one thing or it could possibly be nothing.’”

His overview of paperwork and in-person examination of the objects on the Fowler Museum satisfied Ampene that this was certainly one thing. The objects have been exquisitely crafted, doubtless by royal artisans, and their historical past was well-documented. British troopers had stolen a few of the artifacts in 1874 throughout the sacking of the palace in Kumase, the dominion’s historical capital. Others have been among the many 50,000 ounces of gold demanded by the British authorities within the treaty ending the wars. The Fowler Museum and UCLA have been totally dedicated to returning all the dear artifacts to the dominion, no strings hooked up.

Ampene agreed to help. To start the advanced repatriation course of, in June 2023, he met with the dominion’s ruler, or Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, on the Manhyia Palace in Kumase, and shortly thereafter he organized a gathering on the palace for Fowler Museum representatives.

Years earlier than Ampene had solid a relationship with the king and his employees when he was researching the work of Nana Afua Abasa, a singer and composer of Nnwonkoro songs, who ceaselessly carried out on the palace earlier than her loss of life in 2000. Ampene returns every summer season to examine the palace’s 1000’s of antiquities and replace the king and his employees on his findings.

Otumfuo Osei Tutu II confirmed Ampene’s conclusions relating to the artifacts’ authenticity and historical past. He additionally mentioned that their well timed return could be supreme since it could coincide with an occasion already deliberate for February 2024, to commemorate the battle during which the palace was demolished.

That was solely seven months away.

The Opportunity for a ‘Museum in Motion’

It was a decent timeframe to full the complexities of deaccession and repatriation of the artifacts, a course of that will ultimately contain U.S. and Ghanaian authorities companies in addition to the dominion, museum, UCLA, and the college’s Board of Regents.

Ultimately, one of many largest challenges was acquiring clearance to export the elephant tail whisk, due to the strict restrictions on commerce in elephant objects. “That took perpetually,” says Ampene. Permission got here by means of simply a few days earlier than the artifacts, packed in particular protecting instances, have been to be flown from Los Angeles to Accra, the capital of Ghana. This was “very, very, very, very” nerve-wracking, Ampene remembers.

Packed in particular protecting crates, the artifacts arrived safely in Accra on February 1. They have been saved in a secret location for a number of days earlier than making the 156-mile drive to Kumase beneath the safety of armed safety.

On Monday, February 5, at a personal assembly within the palace, the instances have been opened, and the artifacts have been offered to the king and his employees. The temper was one among pleasure and mutual respect, Ampene remembers.

At the assembly’s conclusion, Ampene felt an enormous wave of aid. “I hadn’t slept that complete weekend,” he says. “The very first thing I did afterwards was drink a glass of wine.”

The day-long commemoration that adopted on Thursday, February 8, was marked by music, dancing, and singing, with each element, from clothes to umbrellas to swords encased in gold, contributing to telling the Asante kingdom’s proud story. The 5,000 friends gathered on the palace grounds included chiefs of different kingdoms, the present vice-president of Ghana and two previous presidents, and diplomats.

The artifacts not too long ago returned by the Fowler Museum will probably be proven within the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumase. However, Ampene believes that museums shouldn’t be a prerequisite for repatriation of stolen antiquities.

“These objects are a part of our tradition and our identification. They have sensible makes use of for us, they’ve non secular makes use of, they reinforce our conventional political methods, our philosophy, our literature. We know what to do with them,” he says. “They don’t want to be in a museum. When we deliver them out at a pageant, that’s our museum in movement.”

The custom of interconnectedness that characterizes the humanities in Africa permeates Ampene’s scholarship and his journey as an ethnomusicologist. “Music is a part of a constellation of the humanities. Drama, poetry, visible arts, all come collectively in a single natural complete,” he says.

This perspective resonates amongst his college students, says Ampene, who chairs the music division within the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts and presently teaches a course on the musical arts of Africa.

The artifacts’ return performed out towards an intense and widening international dialog about return of treasures stolen by colonizing powers. Just just a few weeks earlier, London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum had mentioned they’d “mortgage” again to the Asante kingdom some artifacts stolen throughout colonization. That strategy is abhorrent to Ampene. “We should not reward theft,” he says. “In distinction, UCLA confirmed the entire world what can and ought to be executed. We now have a mannequin to do it the correct method.”