Museum of Black Civilisations

Museum in Senegal

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (December 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,211 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Musée des civilisations noires]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Musée des civilisations noires}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Location of Museum of Black Civilisations

[edit on Wikidata]

The Museum of Black Civilisations (French: Musée des civilisations noires) is a national museum in Dakar, Senegal, that opened on 6 December 2018.

It is directed by Hamady Bocoum, an archaeologist and researcher at Cheikh-Anta-Diop University. The museum was conceived with the goal of highlighting "Africa's contribution to the world's cultural and scientific patrimony." According to Bocoum, it is particularly important to remember that "ironworking was discovered in Africa 2500 years before Christ."^[1]

The museum was on the list of "ultramodern museums" compiled by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in their report on the restitution of African cultural heritage Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle (en: The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics) submitted in November 2018 to the president of France.^[2]

History

Opened on 6 December 2018, it is the realisation of the vision of Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal's first President, to create a museum that would represent the histories and contemporary cultures of Black people everywhere.^[3] The museum cost an estimated $30,000,000 to construct.^[4] The museum has requested the repatriation of African artworks, given that up to 95 percent of Africa's cultural heritage is held outside Africa by major museums.^[5] The Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, for example, holds 70,000 objects from Sub-Saharan Africa.^[6]^[7] The museum was recognised by Time magazine as one of the "World's 100 Greatest Places of 2019".^[8]

Collections

Armor of Dogon hunter
Serigne Babacar Sy's babouches
Sculpture of Ovonramwen being exiled

References

^ "Le Sénégal souhaite la restitution de « toutes » ses œuvres d'art". Le Monde (in French). Internet Archive. Agence France-Presse. 28 November 2018. Archived from the original on 5 December 2019. Retrieved 13 February 2020.
^ Sarr, Felwine; Bénédicte Savoy (November 2018). Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle (PDF) (in French). Retrieved 13 February 2020.
^ "Le Sénégal inaugure un Musée des civilisations noires à Dakar". Le Monde (in French). 5 December 2018. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
^ Brown, Kate (7 December 2018). "Senegal Unveils a Vast Museum That Raises the Stakes in Africa's Campaign to Reclaim Its Art". artnet News. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
^ Searcey, Dionne; Farah Nayeri (15 January 2019). "Senegal's Museum of Black Civilizations Welcomes Some Treasures Home". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
^ Nayeri, Farah (21 November 2018). "Museums in France Should Return African Treasures, Report Says". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
^ Katz, Brigit (10 December 2018). "Sprawling Museum of Black Civilizations Opens in Senegal". Smithsonian.
^ "Museum of Black Civilizations: The World's 100 Greatest Places of 2019". Time. Retrieved 23 August 2019.