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Indianapolis Museum of Art
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Dr. Boureima Diamitani, executive director of the West African Museum Programme, will join Dr. Anderson for a conversation about colonial collections and post-colonial communities, conserving cultural and art history, and the impact of civil wars on cultural heritage preservation.
This video is a part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art's "Conversation Series: Museums in a Global Context."
In honor of the IMA's 125th anniversary, Dr. Maxwell L. Anderson, the Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO, converses with leaders from museums around the world.
Well, we move tonight to the beginning of the series with Dr. Boureima Diamitani who has generously consented to join us after a grueling day
with our staff. I think you spent many hours yesterday afternoon and today learning a bit about the Indianapolis Museum of Art and having a fresh conversation about the future.
Tonight, we're also thanking Linda Duke, who oversees our education division, who has known Dr. Diamitani for thirteen years and has been
indispensible in so many ways and I thank Linda Duke for beginning the conversation. Actually what it lead to was, ironically, I was heading to Salzburg,
few months ago and I mentioned to her that I would be meeting Dr. Diamitani and so we started a discussion and reinforced
the logic of our having a conversation tonight and that's what's lead to some other possibilities that I'll touch on, as well.
Well, the last twenty years has seen a flourishing of private and regional and community-based museums in West Africa and these have been created in a kind of
reclamation of culture and history from the narrative told by the West for the proceeding generations. And these museums have faced many challenges
but they have boldly also walked up to the possibilities of the future and it's, at the same time, western art museums have been, in a glacial pace,
starting to think about how to present African art in a slightly different light or, perhaps, a radically different light; one that absorbs the fact that the period of colonization
evaporated and the period of independence began. But, so many American art museums, in particular, have been slow to figure out what to do to acknowledge a change
in character of both African art and African institutions and tonight is the beginning of a conversation we hope will continue for some time to come...
Since 2001, Dr. Diamitani has served as executive director of the West African Museums Programme, or WAMP, in Dakar, in Senegal,
and WAMP was created in 1982 as a project of the African International Institute. It's a regional NGO, a Non-Governmental Organization, working in sixteen
West African countries with a network of two hundred museums and cultural institutions and wamponline, www.wamponline.org
can give you a great deal more information about it. It does training and professional development, brand-making and administering grant programs and has proved to be
an indispensable feature of life among museums in West Africa. Dr. Diamitani has a Masters in Architecture and Urban Planning from Lome, in Togo,
a diploma in Conservation of Monuments and Site Architecture from the Massey School of Architecture. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa
and subsequently received an International MBA from the Institute Superior in Senegal. So, he is the most educated guest I've ever had, in any context,
and we have a great deal to learn from him. He has put together lots of exhibitions in the curatorial capacity and the directoral capacity, including one on the history of bicycles
and motorcycles in Burkina Faso. He was previously Director of Cultural Heritage and Museums in Burkina Faso from 1989 to 1993
and he served, broadly, as a consultant to many institutions including World Bank, has spent a great deal of time in Washington and serves as an advisory consultant
elsewhere. His publications include a 2005 publication titled, "Armed Conflict and Conservation: Promoting Cultural Heritage and Post-war Recovery," which was published
by Ecrom and, Architecture Traditionale de Burkina, which was one of his many studies. So, we are very grateful that he has made the trip to Indianapolis
and please join me in welcoming Dr. Boureima Diamitani.
Thank you!
[Applause]
I ask Dr. Diamitani if he might start, before we have our conversation, with just some background on what happens with WAMP, and some of what you're working on right now.
Okay...Thank you lots, and thank you for coming. I want to say, I am Boureima Diamitani from...I can say I am from Burkina Faso, but
I am working in Senegal, Burkina Faso is [inaudible] country if for some people used to be Upper Volta.
WAMP is, I am working in WAMP since 2001 and WAMP is non-govermental organization
working with more than two hundred regions today in West Africa. So, we work with a region from Cape Verde to Cameroon
and with Lusophone, Anglophone, and Francophone countries. And, also, we have a lot of different museums,
public museums, private museums, selected what we call a community-based museums and also specialist museum.
What we did is to try to define the role of museum in Africa because we know that we have these definitions,
broad definition of museum from ICOM (International Council of Museums) but we say we know that in Africa we have different types of museums. We don't see museums
like western people see museums, because museums came to Africa during the colonial period with
some [inaudible] French Colonization from francophone countries and British Colonization with anglophone countries, and during that period,
it was before 1960, in the '60s, museums were opened only to western people because a museum
was a place for French people, not for African. So, today after the independence, African people
do not take to change, and, I think, were not familiar or were not comfortable going to the museum because the museum was not a place for them. And also, I think,
during the colonial period, the collection was the content of the museum the objects were for
these people, this audience, this public, not for African because they tried to show the collection to justify the colonization. Saying okay,
look at the sculpture, look at this object, which is why we are colonizing, it was for French people. So today,
many of our museums still are, we can call it after-colonial collection so which is why we don't want to go to museum to go to see
a seat we are using at home or to go to see a dress we are wearing everyday or to see a mask we have at home...
in our village every day. And which is why WAMP was created in 1982 to try to see how to get this definition at this museum
to go beyond all this colonial system and, I think, there is a most important thing at the start was
to help this the stuff and also to help move from the colonial collection, colonial way of thinking and also
for twenty-five years where I have been working with public museums and, when we say public museum in Africa, that means that these museums belong to the
government and it is a minister of culture who appoints the curator who appoints the director of the museum and so [inaudible]
it's a collection, ways of collecting and moving things forward, and we use...how to help develop more small museums, private museums,
community-based museums, special museums belonging to the community, to some people who can take care of that
so they can be able to change things because it's a countryside. And today WAMP, after twenty years in Senegal, of course we were in Abidjan before, we were moving
very quickly to Niger. If you look at Niger is a border side of Senegal and why because
they knew...because we are... we said, "Okay...after twenty-five years we need to do something new." We need to rethink our vision, we need to review our mission
to say, how we can use and how people to come more to the museum because after all this effort,
poorly affecting people without museum. We need ourselves to see, to develop other type of culture we have in Africa,
what we called immaterial culture, because as a object people are not really interested in museum object, maybe we need to see original
knowledge of how people are thinking, practicing, and I think it is always a good use of strategy, moving, taking
WAMP from Senegal to what we see African, we see more people working on this area trying to see,
trying to develop museums and I think that is why I am very happy also to be here, and to see how we can just continue this
support of museum, west African museum, with your museum here.
Thank you very much... Well, of course, tonight we're joined by Ted Celenko who is our curator of African Art, who took our collection from Harrison Eiteljorg, took it and nurtured it
into the one of the ten great African collections today in the United States, and it's on prominent display on the second floor, and I know you had a chance to spend time with Ted today
and see the amazing accomplishments he's made over many years here. I guess I would start with a question about the representation of Africa,
generally, in American museums, you know a lot of American museums, having spent time in Washington and elsewhere, we take a point of departure about how to present objects from Africa.
How would you say, in general, that succeeds, and might be improved upon, in the way we show the art of Africa. So many museums choose to do it in geographical terms,
or thematic terms, and so different from what one experiences in Africa.
Ohh... this is a very tough question but I can say lots of museums in the United States, in Europe, in Africa and the way
Americans are showing African art in the different museum and say it depends on the public, and I think it's the way of
presenting art object is for American public because they need to know more about this object, so you need more labels,
you need, maybe, to show people a lot of pictures so they can just get the sense of what they are seeing. For example, if you show a
wood mask, helmet mask or sculpture before they know exactly what is this object, what is the [inaudible] object,
contrary to Africa whose generally people already know the objects, so may be they don't need all these explanation, all this presentation. But I consider generally it is
what I saw here this morning is a very, very...I don't know what to say...very good representation
and the way I saw it is with larger objects, you have the picture, you have the video,
so you see the object in movement, because it is what I am saying that in Africa you know, going to the museum to look at a face mask in the case glass,
people don't want to do that because you have the mask, you have the a music...with everything in our village
but here I think it is a [inaudible] and I think that in Africa, it is why we have, maybe, some problem getting out of the
[inaudible] museum but here I think it is a way we are presenting these things can say that it is....
Well, it's a striking issue for all museum displays of all cultures because we could say that when we show Renaissance paintings that were in a cathedral in the 16th century,
and we show them in a gallery lined up next to each other and not in a nave with incense burning and ritual around it, it really has very little to do
with the way it was experienced in the Italian Renaissance and the same could be said about a mask of the Igbo people, but generally speaking, yes the challenge I think in this country
is a very different one. And, I guess, I'm curious about how the image, then as you described of immaterial experience
you might look to present in museums in West Africa. What is it you would look to do to get audiences in Africa to look at objects and history differently?
I think it is an immaterial culture is not for...I am going to give an example
with talking about this type of exhibition, I did when I was Director of National Museum in Burkina Faso, we started
with this exhibition on bicycle, of course, we tried to look at and [inaudible] I was nominated
because I was not an art historian, I just started as architect [inaudible] and when I was nominated Director of National Museum
of Burkina Faso, this is the first time I went to see the museum, I did not go to the museum...
That's a good start you see, first day, you're the director and there...
So I asked myself what if I am myself, if I have to go to the museum, what I would like to see in the museum. So we started to do this exhibition but when we look at
we know we just understand that people they have preoccupations, we try to see how to connect people with their preoccupations and to
transform this museum in a place where people can come to learn, to learn about their culture because there are also some aspect about their culture they don't know of
but also to learn about other people, other people culture, it was what I used to say, that in Africa, we don't know
each other. This may be because that we have a lot conflict, because we have illness, simple thing, we have a lot of ethnic groups.
In Burkina Faso, we have sixty different ethnic groups so these different groups, they have a lot of traditional, what we call traditional knowledge.
And this knowledge, we can see them through the ways they are living and way they are doing things and this kind of practices
with [inaudible] to show that the museum, we need to talk people, to bring them to the museum, to do some different things.
For example, we have in the regional museum in Burkina Faso we just try to build traditional houses inside the museum to show to people
that this is the way the simple people live in the house, the ways most of the people live and it's a building, it's the construction
of the traditional houses. We tried to keep what we call as an immaterial culture, because there is a way, the way people are building,
it's a way, you have two things the walls to show, to correct, and to
document also and also I think that...and by the way, we will have to keep this tradition
because people are moving from villages to cities and now from cities to the western countries and in the village today
you don't have, you have maybe only women, maybe little boys and we feel that there's a lot of things missing in different villages
and we need to collect what we call this traditional way of living to collect and to keep them because we think that
we will need to show that to different people later on.
And we have a concept building on that which is unique in the United States around the concept of the art museum because overseas whether it is Canada, Britain, Europe
museum defines a place that's about cultural history, whereas a gallery, is an art...what we would call an art museum.
So, we have this very strange approach to museology in the United States relative to most of the world. How does that strike you in relation to other museums
and, particularly, the way you're looking to build up the expertise, the fact that in the US, we cut art off from life and culture, we make it a fetishistic
worshipped object like, you know, a Skull by Damien Hirst or a mask of the Yoruba or table from the 18th century.
Yes, but generally we don't have, talking about public museum, we don't have, yeah... maybe some ten, one museum and inside this museum, they have everything and
After that, we... this is what I am saying, that we try to define, because we don't have to, we don't see the museums in same way
you in western country see the museum and this is why at WAMP, we try to define. We say okay, even we feel we have to change the name of the museum because today,
in Africa, when we say "museum," people don't know, sometime, what is it about. People, the people who know, they say okay. This is a white thing, you know? This museum is not African,
but we know that you know a place for education or place of information, a place for sensitization is
for we can call it, also culture we can call it another name so it is why we think that we
don't have a same sense of view, you know? Of
American museum because for us it is a place you today, there are two different things, it is a place where...you have different objects and also.
Well, I guess it's starting to change in the United States. I think there is a feeling that it's not sufficient to show beautiful objects on pedestals and assume that everything else is taken care of.
I know a lot of curators around the United States who would be happy not to see any labels because then you can, that way, really enjoy the object without any interference,
but I think there is a shift that's happening in how museums are addressing this and speaking of shifts, you and I were in Austria at a conference that was dealing with a shift
in perception of responsibility over cultural heritage and the ways in which objects that have left their country of modern discovery or of origin
have to be re-looked at. Could you tell us a little bit about that conference and what we experienced there and some of the things that are in development since that conference in Salzburg?
Yes, I think there are many new ideas about this conference was circulation of objects, you know how we are going to share object
and also we can use, open our museums to other people and it is, I think it was a really great conference because I went there with the expectation
to talk about what we are planning to do in the future because West African Museum what I say was a group of museums, two hundred museums,
and in all these museums, we have some problems, we have some difficulties opening our museums because our collections have their spot, so don't have
the same type of collections and we think today that it is necessary, that we open our museums to ourselves first, you know?
For example, museum for Cote d'Ivoire has just sent an exhibition to a museum in Burkina Faso, a museum in Mali or Senegal, something like that,
and open also our exhibition, our collection, our museum to other country, to continent like United States or Europe
because today we cannot, we don't give up group organization and we think that it is necessary that we try to
understand and we know that in your country, there are a lot of objects.
These are African objects, but sometimes, it's all these objects that are, a lot of information missing because during the period of colonial,
many objects left the continent during the colonial period, or colonial [inaudible] and not enough information and sometimes there are some
misinterpretation related to the origin of the different objects and I know that even today sometimes I receive photograph of the objects
from, they don't know if it is in Senufo and we say that it is good to open, so we can just bring the different information,
complete the different object into the museum and, at the same time, we can also open our museum to western people who can bring us
all their expertise on different [inaudible] because today I [Unclear speaking] to spend a lot of time on the conservation of art
and I think it is a great conservation lab and I think I don't know a museum in Africa with conservation lab we have objects,
many objects are deteriorating. We need to preserve and conserve this object and...then we can start doing some research on these objects
because as I said earlier that we also have problem because we don't know each other, and through the object you can really understand, you can really discuss with people,
we can try to see how people.... And I think that this conference in Salzburg was a very good conference, and I think
it was opportunity to meet you, to meet some people like the director of the British Museum, some other director of museums
and today we have a lot of projects with the British Museum and more I think with your museum and I think it is what we have to do,
open our museums, let the objects circulate and also to see how you can make discussion and share the expertise.
Then we don't have enough expertise in Africa but, I think, I am sure there is something we can bring to help in the restoration of this objects.
One of the great moments of the conference was when the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, opened up to you about an opportunity for a true exchange
and the possibility of, their helping you with strategic planning for the future of WAMP and museums in general and I know you're working with the Getty Trust also
on conservation initiative, so today ladies and gentlemen we seem to embark on a fresh and exciting path between the West African Museum Program and Indianapolis Museum of Art,
the third institution beyond the BM and the Getty so we are excited about what may come of that and, in particular, the chance for us to learn about our collections
to study them through the eyes of expertise from your museums equally to perhaps bring some works from collections in West Africa
to the IMA and study those with conservation expertise we're building and to train some staff of yours here, so that's really where the dialogue begins
culturally and where Salzburg was fascinating, was to throw together, literally, people who were from Uzbekistan and a very small museum,
cultural history museum with the Director of the British Museum and we were all thrown together in a remarkable experience and that's how things change, it's how things change, personal interaction
and the opportunity for it. What do you think, in the end, you might gain from the strategic planning exercise with the British Museum,
what do you hope to have that lead you to?
Because I think just before coming to this museum, I just like to say that at WAMP not only we have these museums,
but we also we have a great personnel, we have people, you know, I think also to run the museum, to manage museum, you need some professionals and there are professionals
today, I think from different areas, Anglophone countries, Lusophone countries, Francophone countries,
so thousands of people coming be ready to be able to... and for this strategic planning because
we say that we just received support from the British Museum to help us as to develop a new strategic plan because moving,
relocating, our organization from Senegal to Niger we think that we don't have the place to go and contributing what we used to do. We say, okay...
this is a new challenge, this is a new opportunity for us to stop over and to do something because for twenty-five years we have been doing
a lot of different things, working with public museums, helping developing community-based museums, private museums and today
we think that we need to change our vision because what will be the new vision for WAMP [inaudible]
West African Museum but today I think we have enough expertise we can open West Africa to East Africa, to Central Africa, to other region because I know that today in
in Central Africa, there are a lot of museums and they are looking at WAMP saying okay can you help us, so before we form a constitution
we are not able to work beyond West Africa and I think this is going to be one of the visions and also we think that we have a lot of all these people
in the... part of Arabic countries or because they saw this kind of bond between
white Africa and black Africa and all these people, I think we need to see the culture of this people
and also we think that we need to strengthen our institution to see exactly who is WAMP, who can be mother of WAMP?
who can work with WAMP, who can benefit from the training [Unclear speaking] and also to try to see what type of
kind of, to focus on what we are doing the best because there are a lot of people
who have doing the best, who have been now to try to see what we have been doing the best and so what we would like to do after the development, for example, it's a concept I am working, it is a
strategic plan, we are working together and we think that we will have to organize a validation, what we can call the validation meeting, and we are going to share, discuss
and plan, before partners and to have a big meeting and to sit down, which is what WAMP would like to do is
in 3-4 years. There are some suggestions we would like to make, there is something like that, then I think by January or February
we think to do that with support and I think and I hope you will be there for this meeting and from there we can use that for
our organization.
Well, you know, I have to say representing a western institution, we are gratified to think that China isn't dominating everything in Africa where it seems to be economically,
we've all been reading a lot about how China is becoming a major force in the economy of Africa in general and I am just curious if you've had any connections
with the Chinese authorities or have been witness to their impact in cultural future of Africa?
Well, I think this is not only in Africa it's generally so.
Oh, no, no. We were talking tonight so believe me we are all are painfully aware of the extent to which they own us. At this point.
Yes, but in Africa for the moment, I think they are more involved in the economical parts, with [inaudible] looking for oil, looking for different things, but we know that there
is a real problem in the sector because I know that I just met some professor and I have also artisans who know that there is
[inaudible] lot of duplication of things, today we have the Kente cloth, we have different objects, we know the Chinese just take them
and you have the same design, same motif, very cheap and [inaudible] you know. So...
So it's forgery...
Yes forgery but they know that there is no legal WAMP like to take that we are planning to try to see how we can
just be able to get a law to be able to protect all these artisans because today there is no law to do that.
There is a international, we call that CRO. CRO is a international fair for artisans and will happen in Burkina Faso every two years.
[inaudible] I think [inaudible] they started saying that the Chinese used to come to this fair and take the best artisan work and bring them back to China
and bring them in very cheap and it is a real problem, but now we need to try to see how we can protect this artisan
and how to make them get something from their own...
For us the challenge is recently happened publicized around, the publication of movies and music and for a lot of European designers
the knock-offs and so on, so it's a problem that goes broadly around the world of course. Well, I want to get to some questions if there are some
from our audience, but I did want to ask you couple of more things, one is really how closely the United States is being watched
by West Africans today, and what's going on here?
It's [inaudible] election, I think,
I know that in Senegal, and also in Burkina where people are watching...
You were up at three in the morning watching the first debate...
I guess so... yes...yes... the first debate and even coming here had a lot of orders. People saying, bring me the t-shirt of Obama,
bring these and bring anything you think of Obama.
We are not allowed to sell those in our shop and...
Instead we sell...people talking.
Even...I talked to my wife and she said okay, did you get a t-shirt of Obama. I said okay, I will just go [inaudible] give you some [inaudible]...
No, I know that African people I grew up with, they are very very interested every time they see the debate, every time there is, even one time
to see, because there is a difference then but things are debating, you know, [inaudible] is around three o'clock, one o'clock, and around 2 p.m. in the morning, people stay to watch the debate.
Yeah.
And [inaudible] that I don't want to be politically incorrect but I know that many people just supporting Obama is
not because that he is an African origin, from Africa, but I think that from my point of view people are [inaudible] discussing because of
[inaudible] going to a new view of America to rest of the world
because there is also war because they think that, you know, they think that may be think that it is [inaudible]
end the war in Iraq and so like that [inaudible] Africa what they can say about it.
Well, you know, one of the challenges of course is going to back in time to how to treat cultural heritage that left Africa under duress by traders
who were working against the interests of local concerns and have you, in your mind, drawn a brake line in history and said
after this object should be subject to repatriation and before this it's too much to try to deal with, is that something that you worked on?
Yes, I think in the last article of WAMP, I think I have an article talking about it... because there is a lot of debate going on after he
Repatriation because it is a very political issue because I think that even the African Union, they are debating this issue,
a lot of ministers of culture of Africa debating this issue, but my point of view is that this cannot be only a political debate
because it is a real debate because if you look at the state of museum because my point is that I know almost all the different museums in West Africa,
may be today we can say that, may be one or two museums have the capacity [inaudible] in very good condition to
keep a very good object. I think, I told them that possible we have to take care of the objects we have inside the museum because
there are a lot of museums, you know, when you go there, we have a problem of security you know. Objects in the museums in Africa sometimes, public museums [Unclear speaking]
objects belong to the government, the minister of culture can decide, we come to the museum, we can ask the "director" or "curator",
Pack the object in the box or something like that, to take, take it to give to someone is right
and there is no problem. And if the director curator can also decide to take an object and to do what he likes to do with it and there is a real problem
in all our museums and I think that necessarily we need to see the security and also the condition of keeping
our object in the museum, but I don't want to say that we don't have to ask for the repatriation but before repatriating the object, we have to be sure that this object
inside public museums or open museums in the [inaudible] system do not go back to private collectors because
when the object goes back to Africa, and comes back again here, I think we are not sure that we are going to see it again. So, it is what I am suggesting that we can get a kind of discussion
to ask, not to negotiate, kind of, well, not negotiation, like discussion to try to collaborate and to see how we can just
get some help throughout very good museums, very good condition of keeping the object. Because of I am sure that,
I then was approached by some curator of some director of museum when I was here. Some museums
have a lot of objects so I would like to return it, to give it back to some museum but I don't know to whom to return this object, because today is discussing
the objects, thinking who left Africa in the '90s, today the objects, we are returning this object to whom? To the minister of culture,
to the village, or to the owner because we sometimes we don't know the owner. We don't know where the object is from, we don't know exactly the village.
Even if we take to the village today, are you sure you are going to get someone that we see using this object because there is a lot of Islamization in Africa today.
Lot of objects were burned down, lot of object was, you know, because of Islam and Christianity, they don't want to see the object.
So, they took the all objects was thrown away, but all objects are not being stolen in African. There are some objects that are being used because they don't want them
[inaudible] so, there is lot of thing to do and also as I said that before, that we need to know exactly how many type of objects we have,
in outside and try to see to prepare and today if we like to repatriate all objects, African objects in museum, I don't know if we are going to get enough room,
or enough space to get that, so it is what we are trying to do. We are going to open our museums, we are going to work with other museum to see if we can start getting
back some objects but with negotiation, with some support, with a lot of different possibilities.
Well, of course, it's a world wide problem to think about in every culture of when something is clearly in need of being sent back to its place of origin
and not something we can solve tonight. [Sure.]
Thank you so much. Thanks to all of you for being here tonight.
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