Much has been written in the press about the exhibition, HAZINA, on show in Nairobi courtesy of the British Museum (BM) and the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). The British have taken a stand on repatriation - that it is a non-issue.
Some pro-British Kenyan voices have agreed. Needless to say there has been an African backlash to both. But nothing has been said about the professional thinking that contributed to the exhibition.
Hazina: Traditions, Trade and Transitions in East Africa was intended to 'present new aspects of East Africa and its cultures by evoking and presenting material evidence of the richness, diversity and resilience in the ways of life of its various people built over the years through contacts and exchange', an NMK press release states.
The curatorial team says Hazina interprets objects in new ways that allow visitors to 'appreciate their total cultural and aesthetic values'.
The storyline tries to show the complexity of cultural and historical events in East Africa, using objects drawn largely from the BM. But Hazina offers little real sense of that complexity. There is no interpretation of the intricate relations that have characterised the cultural development of the region.
In fact the story seems to stop nearly a century ago. As visitors, we could not identify those objects that related to trade as an economic activity. What was traded, and in exchange for what?
How does the stand-alone Siwa - the highlight of the exhibition - contribute to the theme of traditions, trade and transitions on its own in a glass case and devoid of its historic and human context? We have extensive knowledge of the region and its importance as a trade route and we still did not find that the exhibition spoke to us. So what can it do for the average Kenyan and East African, let alone the average foreign tourist?
Hazina is visually pleasing, with beautifully crafted glass cases and well laid-out, effectively-lit, clearly labelled objects. But it raises questions. Why are such exhibitions developed? For whom? What kind of collaborations should Africa embrace and what should the mutual benefits be?
In 1991 the International Council of Museums (Icom) convened meetings in Benin, Ghana and Togo on the theme What Museums for Africa? The result of these meetings was the initiation of Icom's programme for Africa - a series of successful activities over a ten-year period.
In 1999, African heritage professionals met to make sure that museums and their public programmes develop in a way that is relevant to its indigenous communities and Africom was born as an autonomous organisation.
Since then, Africans have made strides in determining the direction of heritage institutions and the use of heritage resources for the development of communities. Critical to this is the awareness that Africa's culture is living and cannot be trapped in the glass cases of 'orthodox' museums; and that the European concept of a museum is no longer relevant.
The NMK has a unique opportunity to show this through its refurbishment project for the Nairobi Museum.This European Union-funded project, known as the NMK Support Programme, should allow the institution to take a radical departure from what museums are in the traditional European sense into what could be described as an 'African Museum'.
Victor Kazembe, of Kola Museum, Zambia, has asked: 'How do you define a museum in your own language and cultural background? ... a shrine is a museum… the history of my kingdom is a museum... the natural landscape is a museum... the paintings done by ancient Africans is a museum...'
Interpretations that present African cultural material largely as works of art should be a thing of the past. Sadly, at Hazina this is not the case. Africa's material culture and what it means to us all cannot be expressed via a glass box, no matter how well lit. Without its context, it is meaningless to Africans and typecasts the African person for non-Africans.
In too many museums around the world, curators expect objects to speak about a people, but fail to achieve this. With respect to the good intentions of Hazina's curatorial team, the exhibition serves only to document and represent British imperial activity in East Africa. The curators from both museums have succeeded only in speaking to each other.
Africa does not lack excellent interpretation of material in museums; examples include the Robben Island Museum and the District Six Museum in South Africa, the National Museum of Zambia, and the NMK itself. Important collections of African cultural material are housed in collections abroad, but the African people remain the practitioners and custodians of the culture represented by those same objects.
It is surprising that Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, said in the Guardian: 'Repatriation is yesterday's question. Questions of ownership depend on the thought that an object can only be in one place. That's no longer true.'
But provenance does not change with location. Repatriation must continue to be debated within the context of respect for the diversity of cultural values, and the use of cultural resources for the economic empowerment of communities. We believe it to be as vital as the question of debt relief, trade imbalances and poverty reduction.
The new African museum should be able to develop systems through which communities can protect and develop their heritage, thus making issues such as illicit traffic in antiquities less of a problem.
The interpretation of Africa's heritage, even through partnership, must
recognise the role and knowledge of the owner; the time has gone when curators knew it all. There are excellent examples of mutually beneficial partnerships on this continent, and we must work to emulate these.
Elizabeth Ouma is the coordinator of the VVOB-NMK Interactive Public Programmes Project; Lorna Abungu is the executive director of Africom, the International Council of African Museums.
This article expresses the authors' opinions, not necessarily the views of their employers
Some pro-British Kenyan voices have agreed. Needless to say there has been an African backlash to both. But nothing has been said about the professional thinking that contributed to the exhibition.
Hazina: Traditions, Trade and Transitions in East Africa was intended to 'present new aspects of East Africa and its cultures by evoking and presenting material evidence of the richness, diversity and resilience in the ways of life of its various people built over the years through contacts and exchange', an NMK press release states.
The curatorial team says Hazina interprets objects in new ways that allow visitors to 'appreciate their total cultural and aesthetic values'.
The storyline tries to show the complexity of cultural and historical events in East Africa, using objects drawn largely from the BM. But Hazina offers little real sense of that complexity. There is no interpretation of the intricate relations that have characterised the cultural development of the region.
In fact the story seems to stop nearly a century ago. As visitors, we could not identify those objects that related to trade as an economic activity. What was traded, and in exchange for what?
How does the stand-alone Siwa - the highlight of the exhibition - contribute to the theme of traditions, trade and transitions on its own in a glass case and devoid of its historic and human context? We have extensive knowledge of the region and its importance as a trade route and we still did not find that the exhibition spoke to us. So what can it do for the average Kenyan and East African, let alone the average foreign tourist?
Hazina is visually pleasing, with beautifully crafted glass cases and well laid-out, effectively-lit, clearly labelled objects. But it raises questions. Why are such exhibitions developed? For whom? What kind of collaborations should Africa embrace and what should the mutual benefits be?
In 1991 the International Council of Museums (Icom) convened meetings in Benin, Ghana and Togo on the theme What Museums for Africa? The result of these meetings was the initiation of Icom's programme for Africa - a series of successful activities over a ten-year period.
In 1999, African heritage professionals met to make sure that museums and their public programmes develop in a way that is relevant to its indigenous communities and Africom was born as an autonomous organisation.
Since then, Africans have made strides in determining the direction of heritage institutions and the use of heritage resources for the development of communities. Critical to this is the awareness that Africa's culture is living and cannot be trapped in the glass cases of 'orthodox' museums; and that the European concept of a museum is no longer relevant.
The NMK has a unique opportunity to show this through its refurbishment project for the Nairobi Museum.This European Union-funded project, known as the NMK Support Programme, should allow the institution to take a radical departure from what museums are in the traditional European sense into what could be described as an 'African Museum'.
Victor Kazembe, of Kola Museum, Zambia, has asked: 'How do you define a museum in your own language and cultural background? ... a shrine is a museum… the history of my kingdom is a museum... the natural landscape is a museum... the paintings done by ancient Africans is a museum...'
Interpretations that present African cultural material largely as works of art should be a thing of the past. Sadly, at Hazina this is not the case. Africa's material culture and what it means to us all cannot be expressed via a glass box, no matter how well lit. Without its context, it is meaningless to Africans and typecasts the African person for non-Africans.
In too many museums around the world, curators expect objects to speak about a people, but fail to achieve this. With respect to the good intentions of Hazina's curatorial team, the exhibition serves only to document and represent British imperial activity in East Africa. The curators from both museums have succeeded only in speaking to each other.
Africa does not lack excellent interpretation of material in museums; examples include the Robben Island Museum and the District Six Museum in South Africa, the National Museum of Zambia, and the NMK itself. Important collections of African cultural material are housed in collections abroad, but the African people remain the practitioners and custodians of the culture represented by those same objects.
It is surprising that Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, said in the Guardian: 'Repatriation is yesterday's question. Questions of ownership depend on the thought that an object can only be in one place. That's no longer true.'
But provenance does not change with location. Repatriation must continue to be debated within the context of respect for the diversity of cultural values, and the use of cultural resources for the economic empowerment of communities. We believe it to be as vital as the question of debt relief, trade imbalances and poverty reduction.
The new African museum should be able to develop systems through which communities can protect and develop their heritage, thus making issues such as illicit traffic in antiquities less of a problem.
The interpretation of Africa's heritage, even through partnership, must
recognise the role and knowledge of the owner; the time has gone when curators knew it all. There are excellent examples of mutually beneficial partnerships on this continent, and we must work to emulate these.
Elizabeth Ouma is the coordinator of the VVOB-NMK Interactive Public Programmes Project; Lorna Abungu is the executive director of Africom, the International Council of African Museums.
This article expresses the authors' opinions, not necessarily the views of their employers
