Africa: The Art of a Continent.

This sumptuously produced catalogue is the record for posterity of the Royal Academy's exhibition of the same name held in London from 4 October 1995 to 21 January 1996. The Africa exhibition may justifiably be called the largest exposition of African arts and antiquities yet mounted in Great Britain, with all of the exhibits figured in the book as colour plates of a very high standard of reproduction. The indefatigable energy which has led to its assembly is undoubtedly to be saluted. But is what we see an intelligent composition of objects in their proper context? Is it not more accurately seen as a `drag-lining' of objects, selected for aesthetic enjoyment rather than for education, and to satisfy the tastes of the art market rather than the needs of the global public? An informed inspection of the catalogue's accompanying text reveals both questionable attitudes to the exhibits, provenances, and factual inaccuracies regarding their cultural and archaeological contexts.

In his foreword to the catalogue, the president of the Royal Academy explains the origins of the project: inspired by the success of the 1982 travelling exhibition Treasures of Ancient Nigeria it became the dream of the Academy to stage an exhibition devoted to the art of Africa, (Phillips 1995b: 8). Tom Phillips was given the task of collecting the items for this exhibition. In his travels he traversed many artistically rich regions, some of which were already known to him. Disingenuously, he records, in a Royal Academy Magazine article about his experiences tracking down the treasures of the continent' (Phillips 1995a: 36):

`I have often stayed in Ghana and the Ivory, Coast. Collecting tiny gold weights ... became a passion since they were cheap to buy: even in the hardest times I could afford to add a little to my collection, especially if I was in Africa where a small find could be haggled down in price.'

Phillips was also surprised by the archaeologists he met along the way. He records his thoughts at Saqqara, as he watched archaeologists back-filling tombs at the end of a season (Phillips 1995a: 34-6);

`Instead of digging up works of art for the delight of the world (which I naively thought of as one of the main benefits of archaeology) we watched amazed as the experts, having drawn and numbered these masterpieces promptly reburied them. Some of the beautiful painted fragments and sculptures would have made any curator or collector ache with desire.'

Phillips, many travels began to bear fruit. However, in gathering the exhibition together the Academy was not being very particular about the source of the objects it chose to display. In recent years large numbers of terracotta figurines have been illegally dug up in Mali and in Nigeria, and exported illegally to Europe where they have `found their way' into private collections (McIntosh & McIntosh 1986; Dembele &, van der Waals 1990; Insoll 1991). The Academy had proposed to borrow some of these from private collectors and include them in their exhibition, but it was here that their plans met with an unexpected difficulty. The British Museum, other institutions and independent scholars questioned the propriety of such a procedure. The British Museum said it would withhold from the exhibition its planned lendings unless African governments gave their willing consent to the display of looted pieces. The Royal Academy failed to press this diplomatic negotiation with sufficient energy to obtain these consents, and so the organizers decided not to display the looted terracottas. Indeed, they reassured the scholarly community that they would exclude from the exhibition any work that would contravene the 1970 UNESCO convention (on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit, Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property,) or any relevant national legislations. The decision by the RA to exclude looted items constitutes the recognition of an important principle. However, the resulting exhibition is not so different for this decision as one might have hoped.

In the first week of October 1995, the exhibition and its catalogue became available to the public. Both are laid out in a geographical rather than a chronological framework, although some temporal organization which creeps into the show itself is absent in the catalogue. For example, upon entering the exhibition space one is immediately confronted by a strikingly lit Olduwan core and two hand-axes, whilst in the catalogue they are situated in their respective regions beside 17th-century Ethiopian gospels and 17th-century San rock-paintings.

In regional terms, works from Egypt, Zaire and Nigeria are the best represented. The former is an especially welcome inclusion, since Egypt is often perceived as somehow detached from Africa. The Egyptian contribution particularly stresses Pre-Dynastic Egypt, with lesser contributions from Dynastic and later Nubian sources. From Egypt we proceed on a clockwise tour of the rest of Africa. East Africa is more strongly represented than usual, particularly by relatively recent pieces in wood. Southern Africa is, however, a treat for the archaeologist, with the Late Pleistocene Apollo 11 rock-painting spalls, and other more recent fragments of petroglyphs and pictographs on display for the first time in the UK. Additionally, it is pleasing to see the Lydenberg heads and other southern African terracotta and soapstone figurines on display, all with good archaeological context. For Central Africa, wooden objects are again the dominant feature, with one piece dating to the 7th century. This exceptional carving of an aardvark does well to remind us of how ancient the pedigrees of wooden sculpture must be in Africa. In the West African section the range and versatility of the artistic traditions are illustrated by numerous creations in stone, wood, terracotta, ivory, textiles and metal - a significant number of which have dates and archaeological contexts attached. However, when stepping across the gallery or turning a page in the catalogue an observer familiar with the controversy over this exhibition will be shocked to see what confronts them next-displayed as back-lit colour transparencies in the gallery, and without qualification in the catalogue, are the self-same looted terracottas from Mali and Nigeria we were promised we would not see. These and other physically displayed items in the `Sahel and Savanna' section, whilst of unquestionable historic and aesthetic significance, are disturbingly lacking in context. Finally, the viewer or reader arrives at the sections on Northern Africa, which, though paying a passing respect to the Sahara. are mostly concerned with the Mediterranean littoral and Islamic artistic developments.

The contextual information provided for the exhibition is sometimes inaccurate, whilst in the galleries it is often too dimly lit to be readable. The catalogue,s text comes in several varieties. a preface and introduction by the organizers, three chapters on broad views of African art (from African, European and archaeological perspectives), seven thematic chapters to accompany the artefact sections and numerous captions for the individual exhibits. The individual captions provide some points of interest. To begin with, only two of these are not signed: those regarding `Djenne metalwork' (p.485) and `Djenne terracottas' (p. 488). Is this because no scholars, or at least none who would put their name to their work, were found to write reviews of these looted pieces@ Or may we assume the editor supplied them@ It is interesting that they pay no attention to the various contexts of the Jenne terracottas which have been recovered archaeologically (cf. McIntosh & McIntosh 1980; S.K. McIntosh 1995). It is also significant that archaeologically recovered pieces are said to have been thermoluminescence-dated (p.488), when in fact all pieces from the Jenne-Jeno excavations were dated by their contexts in a chronology derived from 14C dating and pottery seriation (R.J. McIntosh pers. comm.).Indeed, only looted objects have been dated by thermoluminescence (cf. de Grunne 1982) - an unreliable method even when accompanied by requisite dosimeter readings of surrounding soils in the field. Additionally, in at least one instance a scholars caption for a museum piece has been made to stretch, without the scholar's knowledge, to include a looted piece of the same type as that properly described (Eyo pers. comm.). We expect there may be other such instances.

Concerning the more general essays, one must applaud the efforts of Garlake, Picton, Insoll and McLean who struggled to place the exhibits in their African archaeological contexts. However, some factual inconsistencies in their works, which seem to stem from both an unawareness of recent literature and a lack of adequate editing, damage the lasting scholarly value of this catalogue. To itemize a few such efforts, Garlake continues to note the presence of precocious copper industries in the Sahara of Niger (c. 2000 BC) which have been dismissed as non-existent since 1988 (Killick 1988 et al.). Picton's and Garlake's texts also cannot agree on the earliest dates for African ceramics (Picton: Amekni 6100 BC, Garlake: throughout the Sahara 8000 BC), when the earliest known dates remain those of Tagalagal (Niger) dated to 7420 130 and 7380 130 uncalibrated b.c. (Roset 1987).

These, however, are mere quibbles when compared to some other errors: Picton (p. 330) places the medieval state of Ghana `at the headwaters of the Upper Niger' (rather than the Mauritanian Sahel and Middle Niger), Phillips (p. 19) and Picton or Phillips (p. 326) term the `Nok Culture' a `civilisation, and `a kingdom' (when we barely possess enough archaeological information even to term it a `culture', cf. Shaw 1981), a `Bronze Age' is created for the Sahara by Insoll & McLean (p.536) out of thin air, and these same authors (p. 535) place the `Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age, of North Africa into a period `50,000-7,000 BC' (rather than as a period beginning at 1,500,000 b.p.). Further sloppiness on the part of the Royal Academy is evidenced by an article in their most recent magazine (Phillips & Attenborough 1995), which after noting that the `Igbo-Ukwu pottery vessel' was probably used for ceremonial purposes by a high-ranking man, continues: `At his death it would have been buried in his grave along with other ritual trappings' (Phillips & Attenborough 1995:46). To a more careful reader of the Igbo-Ukwu excavation's published reports, it would be clear that this pot did not come from a grave, but a disposal pit.

In considering the composition of the catalogue as a whole some curious statistics may be derived. In it there are pieces from some 40 private collectors and `others who wish to remain anonymous' (Phillips 1995b: i). It should be remembered that these lenders gain something in return for their loan. The cachet `Exhibited at the Royal Academy', included in an object's pedigree, considerably enhances its monetary value. There are nearly 400 objects from private collections in the catalogue - more than half of the total pieces on display in the entire exhibition. In other words, the bulk of Africa: the art of a continent consists of material gleaned from the art-market system which has ravaged the art and antiquities of Africa.

The popularity of collecting has, of course been on the increase in Europe and America during the prosperous post-war years. This is not the place to go into the psychology of collecting, which Muensterberger (1994) has characterized as `an unruly passion', but merely to note its vogue in peoples of an upper-income bracket. Such passions are undoubtedly more widespread when they can be dignified as refined aesthetic activities, bolstered by good investment prospects. Where there is a such a demand, entrepreneurs will supply it; so a market comes into being.

The infernal art-market system of local diggers, runners, agents, dealers and collectors has ravaged the archaeology of more than one continent, and triggered protests over more than just this single exposition (see Colin Renfrew's 26 January 1994 article in the Guardian concerning the exhibition of the Ortiz Collection, also hosted by the Royal Academy; see also Renfrew 1995). The strength of market demand, stimulated by honouring private collectors and their collections at exhibitions, results in the active encouragement of theft and smuggling.

As well as leading to the pillage of West African archaeological sites, the collector/dealer system centred in Europe has led to widespread thefts from African museums, particularly in Nigeria. One of the pieces given pride of place at the Royal Academy's exhibition is an ornate Igbo-Ukwu pottery vessel, stolen from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Ibadan last year. Two-and-a-half months before the exhibition was to open, an `art dealer' in London tipped off the RA collector that the vessel was in the hands of a dealer in Brussels. The RA collector immediately went to the Belgian capital. There, the antiques dealer was informed that it had been stolen from a museum; not wishing to handle it, the dealer surrendered the pot to Phillips. The original excavator (Thurstan Shaw) was contacted by the assistant editor of the catalogue to write a caption for this vessel, which was intended for the RA exhibition. When the RA was asked by Shaw if the Nigerian authorities had been informed of its recovery and the answer was negative, he insisted that they should be notified at once. Phillips later recounted that he took the piece back to London for safe-keeping, with a view to handing it over eventually to the `Department of Antiquities [sic] in Lagos'; he continued, The only proviso would be that the RA should be able to include it in the show, (Phillips a Attenborough 1995: 47). The RA collector told Shaw he had kept it in his house for several days delighting in it. Meanwhile the trail of other objects looted in the same raid from Ibadan, which may well have been in Brussels at the time, had gone cold. No police agencies were ever contacted by the Royal Academy concerning this incident. After Shaw's protest, it was nine days before the necessary fax was despatched by the RA to Ibadan University.

The Royal Academy authorities give us many reasons to believe neither archaeological context nor the niceties of legal title are an over-riding concern for them. In addition to the pictorial inclusion of looted Jenne and Nok terracottas in the exhibition, there are other looted pieces physically present.. a classic Kisalian pot, Cross River monoliths and metal objects from Nigeria, a Komaland terracotta from Ghana, ancient metal objects from Jenne, Sao terracottas from Chad, and others. The provenances of some looted objects are shamelessly undisguised. Regarding item 6.3, a copper-alloy neck ring (probably c. 12th century), we are informed `the owner was told it came from Jenne'. Concerning item 6.32, a Komaland terracotta (c. 13th-16th century) from a private collection, we are informed `thousands of small terracotta sculptures have been found in Komaland burial sites'. Most of these finds have not been made archaeologically. A further exhibit illustrates better than any other the Royal Academy's disregard of archaeological scholarship. Item 7.5 is a polished stone axe from the collection of Dr Klaus-Jochim Kruger, provenance: `the Sahara'. We are unaware of Dr Kruger as a published archaeological scholar of the Sahara. This axe is neither unique nor of outstanding aesthetic value. There are dozens like it in the collections of more than one museum in Britain, sometimes of even greater aesthetic merit. However, the connections of the Royal Academy tend so much to the private collecting world that it seems they would prefer this unprovenanced object from a private collection to a well-provenanced one from a museum.

Another disturbing aspect of both the catalogue and the exhibition is that no case is made against looting by the text or the displays (but see postscript). If anything, archaeology is made to seem partially culpable for the situation. The results of archaeological studies are almost unmentioned except where they lend a date to a piece. The scarcity of archaeological research is emphasized. Archaeology is even portrayed as a stimulus to looting! An anonymous writer notes regarding the Jenne terracottas, `Unfortunately, the success of the official excavations led to an epidemic of pillaging by the local population' (p.488). This startling remark is false. Looting at Jenne was documented by Merrick Posnansky (pers. comm.) four years before the start of the McIntoshs' archaeological excavations at Jenne-Jeno. In 1973 Posnansky noted local `pot-hunting' for terracottas in the Inland Delta coordinated by the runners of de Grunne (pere).

It would seem that Africa: the art of a continent demonstrates the Royal Academy's belief that aesthetic contemplation is to be so highly valued that it may destroy part of the sum of human knowledge. Should this be at the cost of divorcing displayed specimens from an essential part of themselves, so integral that the process is like physically cutting them in half?. Is this not a one-sided and self-interested elevation of the Royal Academy's own pre-occupations? Most of the specimens which have reached their present position of honour in the exhibition have been stripped of the contexts which gave them meaning and significance for the people who made them, or which could have provided a greater knowledge of the history of these peoples. A Royal Academician has said to one of us that there are enough Nok terracottas for everybody, collectors and archaeologists alike. Such magnanimity is only possible because so many Nok pieces have been illegally dug up and exported in the last 25 years. Archaeologists cannot make effective use of such terracottas since they are mere objects longer data-carriers. Essentially what is in are the seemingly contradictory value of archaeology and the art market. One must decide which is ultimately of greater value in the long run.

The RA has tried to pay lip-service to the principles of the 1970 UNESCO convention: but, in a form of special pleading, RA Secretary Piers Rodgers has gone on record to say, `Perhaps one should question the extension to exhibitions of a principle which originally applied only to acquisitions' (Bailey 1995: 53). In other words, we may have to abjure acquiring stolen property but we think it is all right to exhibit it. Is this a responsible position to take?

The denudation of Africa's cultural heritage commenced with the West's late-19th-century interventions on the continent. But th grievous fact is that the bulk of the damage has taken place during the past 50 years, and it is going on at an accelerating pace. It is not within the remit of this article to provide a panacea for this illness (many others have wrestled with this problem, e.g. Fforde 1991, Palmer 1991), but perhaps the long-awaited ratification by Great Britain of the 1970 UNESCO agreement would be a good start.

References

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