When it comes to international crises, the British Museum (BM) seems to have a knack of being in the right place at the right time. When the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad happened in April 2003, a huge press conference had already been called to kick off the events for the museum's 250th anniversary.
Needless to say it turned into a let's-save-Iraq's-heritage press call. Then came Sudan. Though three years in the planning, the museum's exhibition of Sudan's ancient treasures coincided with the genocide in Darfur gaining worldwide attention.
And now the Africa Project; a BM plan to work across the continent in various ways linked nicely with the UK government's own plans for the Commission for Africa. It led to £500,000 going direct to the museum that was quickly matched, in kind, by the British Council.
You would need to have been living on another planet to have failed to gather from our politicians that 2005 is Africa's year. The Commission for Africa intends to 'seize 2005 as an opportunity to make a difference for Africa', then there is the rich nations' economic programme of debt relief, the war on Aids and other diseases and Africa 2005, a London-based events programme celebrating the arts and culture of the continent with contributions from local museums.
All hope to change the idea of Africa as the continent of gloom. The ethos behind the Africa Project at the BM is to find new and innovative ways of working with the continent's cultural institutions.
John Mack is the man behind the idea. He was previously the keeper of ethnography (which has now been renamed the Africa, Oceania and the Americas department) and the curator of the Sainsbury African Galleries. An east and west Indian Ocean specialist, Mack is now professor of world cultures at the University of East Anglia.
The project has kicked off with a unique collaboration between the National Museums of Kenya and the BM. This month Kiprop Lagat, the curator of ethnography at the National Museum of Kenya (NMK) in Nairobi, will be making his final choices from the African objects that the BM holds.
Yes, you read it right. Lagat has free rein from all the collections and stores to select any objects (about 150) he wishes to take back with him for an exhibition about trade across a number of east African countries. Of course they are on short-term loan (for six months).
'There are no locked rooms,' Mack says. But surely the contested Ethiopian Maqdala treasures were out of bounds and can you imagine the uproar if the Benin bronzes were among the choices? As it turns out, the theme that Lagat has chosen needs neither set of objects to tell the story. Phew.
Lagat's exhibition will look at early trade around Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, southern Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda; the links between these countries created by trade; and the influence of immigration from the eastern and western world. He is eager to explore east Africa as a confluence of different cultures. The exhibition is planned to open in early 2006.
Lagat says he is in a privileged position, not only to have such an opportunity to search through one of the world's greatest museum collections, but also because he is getting to learn more about his neighbours. 'Africans rarely travel to other countries on the continent,' he says. 'The newspapers carry political and economic stories, but never in a cultural context.'
Lagat has already been surprised by some of what he has found - including items of Kenyan origin that have never been seen in the country before and were more likely thought of as from neighbouring countries.
Machetes brought from Birmingham were transformed by the Maasai into their own weapons. Brass brought into southern Sudan by trade was used for prestigious headgear. And sandals seen across east Africa came with migrants from India.
He already has plans for one of the opening displays to be a Kanga cloth, a textile unique to east Africa. The one he has chosen has the Swahili words sewn into the cloth, which in translation read: 'You do not know anything'. Lagat says it will act as a parody of visitors who think that they know about the culture of their regions.
It will be the first time that an African will interpret some of the BM's African objects. But it doesn't necessarily follow that they will be displayed much differently from how the BM would show them.
Lagat received his postgraduate diploma in care and management of heritage and museum collections in 2003 from the Programme for Museum Development in Africa (PMDA), an international NGO based in Mombassa.
The course was established in conjunction with the University of Nairobi, Iccrom (the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), the University of London and the National Museums of Kenya.
For the past year, Lagat has been an MA student of Mack's at the University of East Anglia. To a large extent, his professional life has been shaped by a western ideal. He says that the NMK has never been updated or refurbished since its beginnings in 1910. The museum is already closed in preparation for a refurbishment.
Lagat talks of wanting to change the way the objects are displayed at the NMK, but he also sees value in learning from his colleagues in the UK. In NMK the displays are typological, giving little insight into ways of life, he says.
Mack's display of the Sainsbury African Galleries follows the same thematic approach. Lagat says he thinks the African Galleries should be displayed by country because of western views of Africa as one culture rather than many.
He thinks the Africa Project will directly influence the way the NMK is redisplayed. 'By being trained academically in the UK and having discussions with colleagues, I hope to learn new ways of presenting and interpreting objects.'
But Lagat reveals his disillusionment with the pace of change at the NMK. Over the past six years, he says, promises for the redisplay of the museum has been slowed by government bureaucracy. 'If we have this exhibition [on trade] before the permanent galleries are replaced then I will be in a position to influence how the permanent collection is presented,' he adds.
There is already a good pedigree at the NMK of engaging communities with objects. In 1992 Kenya got its first taste of multi-party politics. This led to 'a kind of tribal competition', says Lagat.
Thousands were killed and many Kikuyu, one of the largest ethnic groups, were chased from their land, had property confiscated and were banned from their region, the Rift Valley. Retaliations followed the initial violence.
The museum initiated a project to bring elders of different ethnic groups to the museum to discuss their peace traditions. Many elders identified common objects as peace symbols. Most had respect for these objects. And it was these same objects that formed an exhibition that received much media attention.
The projects achieved longevity when some of the participating communities set up their own local peace museums. A pan-African conference planned to be held in late summer in Mombassa, Kenya, is another strand of the Africa Project. The British Council is giving logistical help, but it is the PMDA that will be leading the way on the content of the conference.
Mack says the point of the conference is to find a way for UK professionals from various institutions to develop appropriate relationships with African institutions and colleagues.
'Appropriate doesn't mean taking our way of doing things to Africa and assuming [the way in which they work]. The problems and the issues have to be defined in Africa first,' says Mack. 'It's important, very important that we don't repeat the colonial model.'
Mack's project doesn't stop there. Last month he visited Ethiopia to help the national museums develop some displays and talk about the possible long-term loan of the Maqdala treasures.
There are further plans for partnerships in west and southern Africa and concentrated museum work in other east African countries including Zanzibar and Sudan.
So Africa is getting the positive international attention it needs. But what does the BM get out of it? Are its actions purely altruistic? 'We get a model of a completely different way of working abroad,' Mack says. 'Part of the museum's fundamental mission is to do this kind
of work.'
Lagat showed me digital images of parts of the collection he has been through but information on the way the objects reached the BM is lacking.
Mack says: 'They came to the museum in the obvious way. Through big game hunters and explorers like Major Powell-Cotton and big missionary figures.'
How can the museum be sure that these colonialists didn't get them through dubious means? Because 'there are no documented examples', Mack says.
It may seem unjust to question the BM's motives and to continue to harp on about its colonial legacy while it gives to countries around the world. But these questions are not going away; and nor should they.
Opening up its collections in this way is a start. Mack will leave the BM with a legacy of forging better relations between African and British museums, and between African and British curators.
But perhaps the next move in the BM's quest for good international relations will be longer-term loan of its unique collections.
Needless to say it turned into a let's-save-Iraq's-heritage press call. Then came Sudan. Though three years in the planning, the museum's exhibition of Sudan's ancient treasures coincided with the genocide in Darfur gaining worldwide attention.
And now the Africa Project; a BM plan to work across the continent in various ways linked nicely with the UK government's own plans for the Commission for Africa. It led to £500,000 going direct to the museum that was quickly matched, in kind, by the British Council.
You would need to have been living on another planet to have failed to gather from our politicians that 2005 is Africa's year. The Commission for Africa intends to 'seize 2005 as an opportunity to make a difference for Africa', then there is the rich nations' economic programme of debt relief, the war on Aids and other diseases and Africa 2005, a London-based events programme celebrating the arts and culture of the continent with contributions from local museums.
All hope to change the idea of Africa as the continent of gloom. The ethos behind the Africa Project at the BM is to find new and innovative ways of working with the continent's cultural institutions.
John Mack is the man behind the idea. He was previously the keeper of ethnography (which has now been renamed the Africa, Oceania and the Americas department) and the curator of the Sainsbury African Galleries. An east and west Indian Ocean specialist, Mack is now professor of world cultures at the University of East Anglia.
The project has kicked off with a unique collaboration between the National Museums of Kenya and the BM. This month Kiprop Lagat, the curator of ethnography at the National Museum of Kenya (NMK) in Nairobi, will be making his final choices from the African objects that the BM holds.
Yes, you read it right. Lagat has free rein from all the collections and stores to select any objects (about 150) he wishes to take back with him for an exhibition about trade across a number of east African countries. Of course they are on short-term loan (for six months).
'There are no locked rooms,' Mack says. But surely the contested Ethiopian Maqdala treasures were out of bounds and can you imagine the uproar if the Benin bronzes were among the choices? As it turns out, the theme that Lagat has chosen needs neither set of objects to tell the story. Phew.
Lagat's exhibition will look at early trade around Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, southern Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda; the links between these countries created by trade; and the influence of immigration from the eastern and western world. He is eager to explore east Africa as a confluence of different cultures. The exhibition is planned to open in early 2006.
Lagat says he is in a privileged position, not only to have such an opportunity to search through one of the world's greatest museum collections, but also because he is getting to learn more about his neighbours. 'Africans rarely travel to other countries on the continent,' he says. 'The newspapers carry political and economic stories, but never in a cultural context.'
Lagat has already been surprised by some of what he has found - including items of Kenyan origin that have never been seen in the country before and were more likely thought of as from neighbouring countries.
Machetes brought from Birmingham were transformed by the Maasai into their own weapons. Brass brought into southern Sudan by trade was used for prestigious headgear. And sandals seen across east Africa came with migrants from India.
He already has plans for one of the opening displays to be a Kanga cloth, a textile unique to east Africa. The one he has chosen has the Swahili words sewn into the cloth, which in translation read: 'You do not know anything'. Lagat says it will act as a parody of visitors who think that they know about the culture of their regions.
It will be the first time that an African will interpret some of the BM's African objects. But it doesn't necessarily follow that they will be displayed much differently from how the BM would show them.
Lagat received his postgraduate diploma in care and management of heritage and museum collections in 2003 from the Programme for Museum Development in Africa (PMDA), an international NGO based in Mombassa.
The course was established in conjunction with the University of Nairobi, Iccrom (the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), the University of London and the National Museums of Kenya.
For the past year, Lagat has been an MA student of Mack's at the University of East Anglia. To a large extent, his professional life has been shaped by a western ideal. He says that the NMK has never been updated or refurbished since its beginnings in 1910. The museum is already closed in preparation for a refurbishment.
Lagat talks of wanting to change the way the objects are displayed at the NMK, but he also sees value in learning from his colleagues in the UK. In NMK the displays are typological, giving little insight into ways of life, he says.
Mack's display of the Sainsbury African Galleries follows the same thematic approach. Lagat says he thinks the African Galleries should be displayed by country because of western views of Africa as one culture rather than many.
He thinks the Africa Project will directly influence the way the NMK is redisplayed. 'By being trained academically in the UK and having discussions with colleagues, I hope to learn new ways of presenting and interpreting objects.'
But Lagat reveals his disillusionment with the pace of change at the NMK. Over the past six years, he says, promises for the redisplay of the museum has been slowed by government bureaucracy. 'If we have this exhibition [on trade] before the permanent galleries are replaced then I will be in a position to influence how the permanent collection is presented,' he adds.
There is already a good pedigree at the NMK of engaging communities with objects. In 1992 Kenya got its first taste of multi-party politics. This led to 'a kind of tribal competition', says Lagat.
Thousands were killed and many Kikuyu, one of the largest ethnic groups, were chased from their land, had property confiscated and were banned from their region, the Rift Valley. Retaliations followed the initial violence.
The museum initiated a project to bring elders of different ethnic groups to the museum to discuss their peace traditions. Many elders identified common objects as peace symbols. Most had respect for these objects. And it was these same objects that formed an exhibition that received much media attention.
The projects achieved longevity when some of the participating communities set up their own local peace museums. A pan-African conference planned to be held in late summer in Mombassa, Kenya, is another strand of the Africa Project. The British Council is giving logistical help, but it is the PMDA that will be leading the way on the content of the conference.
Mack says the point of the conference is to find a way for UK professionals from various institutions to develop appropriate relationships with African institutions and colleagues.
'Appropriate doesn't mean taking our way of doing things to Africa and assuming [the way in which they work]. The problems and the issues have to be defined in Africa first,' says Mack. 'It's important, very important that we don't repeat the colonial model.'
Mack's project doesn't stop there. Last month he visited Ethiopia to help the national museums develop some displays and talk about the possible long-term loan of the Maqdala treasures.
There are further plans for partnerships in west and southern Africa and concentrated museum work in other east African countries including Zanzibar and Sudan.
So Africa is getting the positive international attention it needs. But what does the BM get out of it? Are its actions purely altruistic? 'We get a model of a completely different way of working abroad,' Mack says. 'Part of the museum's fundamental mission is to do this kind
of work.'
Lagat showed me digital images of parts of the collection he has been through but information on the way the objects reached the BM is lacking.
Mack says: 'They came to the museum in the obvious way. Through big game hunters and explorers like Major Powell-Cotton and big missionary figures.'
How can the museum be sure that these colonialists didn't get them through dubious means? Because 'there are no documented examples', Mack says.
It may seem unjust to question the BM's motives and to continue to harp on about its colonial legacy while it gives to countries around the world. But these questions are not going away; and nor should they.
Opening up its collections in this way is a start. Mack will leave the BM with a legacy of forging better relations between African and British museums, and between African and British curators.
But perhaps the next move in the BM's quest for good international relations will be longer-term loan of its unique collections.
