Senegal Opens Museum of Black Civilizations--One of the Largest of Its Kind In the World

[Kind of Blue]

Four of 7 elders/founders of my African-American women's organization are on their way next year to visit Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, South Africa and Uganda. I'm excited to tell them about this.

What began as an idea proposed by Senegal's first president Léopold Sédar Senghor over 50 years ago, has now become a reality as Senegal has officially opened the Museum of Black Civilizations, one of the largest of its kind in the world.

Senegal's current president Macky Sall inaugurated the museum earlier today in Dakar. The design of the building, which contains 14,000 square meters of floor space and a capacity for 18,000 exhibits, was inspired by circular traditional homes native to Southern Senegal, BBC Africa reports. Its size is comparable to the National Museum of African American History in Washington, according to Al Jazeera.

The museum has been several years in the making, with leaders after Senghor putting investment into the arts on the back burner in the face of economic and political challenges. In 2011, President Abdoulaye Wade laid the foundation for the museum, but construction was halted due to a political transition, adds CGTN Africa News. The project was put into motion by Sall beginning in 2013, and has finally come to fruition through a $34 million investment from China—another indication of China's ubiquitous economic presence across Africa.

The museum, is dedicated to "decolonizing African knowledge" and hosts artifacts and exhibitions representative of both continental Africa, and its diaspora. The museum's first exhibitions showcase works from artists from Mali and Burkina Faso as well as from Cuba and Haiti. The diaspora in Brazil and the United States are also represented in the museum's collection.

As Al Jazeera reports, some of the works currently showing at the museum include "Memory in Motion" by Haitian artist Philippe Dodard, which depicts "the stages of enslavement from Africa to the slave ship to the Caribbean plantation with floating eyes," to quote the publication directly. As well as "Women of the Nation" which pays homage to impactful women of African decent.

In November, Senegal urged France to return 100 pieces of looted art, following the release of a report commissioned by France's President Emmanuel Macron, entitled The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics. Macron had recently ordered 26 Benin artifacts to be returned to their country of origin.

https://www.okayafrica.com/senegal-opens-museum-of-black-civilizations-dakar-largest-in-africa/?mc_cid=15ac499a8c&mc_eid=b63032a5ca

[brush]

1. Bravo. I visited Dakar several years ago and saw an earlier African art...

museum there. The pieces there were spectacular. My wife used to deal traditional, ritual African pieces here that were imported from all over the continent but it was obvious when I saw the displays that the Senegalese kept the most important pieces for themselves.

[Kind of Blue]

2. Wow, how wonderful for you and your wife

to have seen and have those pieces in real life! And makes sense that the museum was keeping many out of sight perhaps for this grand opening that took a long time coming. I know pressure has been growing for a few years now on European museums to return all of the works. Though I doubt that Macron with his urgings to return artifacts will ever give up the obelisk

[brush]

3. Yes, the obelick needs to be returned, just as the Elgin marbles need to go back to Greece.

[Kind of Blue]

4. Yes, indeed! Those gorgeous pieces, too.

Give countries back their national treasures. They're no longer loot.

[Lucky Luciano]

5. Fascinating. I would love to visit. nt

[Kind of Blue]

6. Me, too!

And your name cracks me up I just can't imagine how you chose it.

[Lucky Luciano]

7. Lucky Luciano...

I was on some now defunct website in 2004 that had a political msg board...someone linked to free republic and I wanted to check the cesspool. I signed up initially as Lucifer Himself and wrote a sarcastic pro Iraq war post. They were actually smart enough to note the sarcasm and I was quickly removed. They yelled go back to DU, which I didn’t understand.

I came back as Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, Meyer Lansky, and one or two others before someone finally said to go to Democratic Underground you moonbat libtard!

So I cane here, but kept the pattern.
I signed up as Lucky Luciano and haven’t looked back!

[Kind of Blue]

8. You are too funny! That is some serious audacity

you have on you, my Gawd. I wish there was some kind of DU award for cojones! Thanks for the excellent story