Funding: Franco-German Research Fund on the provenance of cultural goods from sub-
Saharan Africa (Centre Marc Bloch)
Project duration: January 2025 - December 2026
For the Frobenius Institute directed by: Richard Kuba
Project partners:
Barbara Plankensteiner and Aziz Sandja (Museum am Rothenbaum, Kulturen und Künste der Welt, Hamburg)
Gaёlle Beaujean, Benoît de L’Estoile and Hélène Ivanoff (Musée du quai Branly, Paris)
Daouda Keїta and Chehibou Coulibali (Musée Nationale du Mali, Bamako)
The aim of this French German Malian project is to analyze, from a dual perspective of comparison and evaluation of their legitimacy, the acquisition practices and types of objects that make up the collection brought back by the German Africanist Leo Frobenius under the auspices of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnography on the one hand, and by several military and researchers under the supervision of the French colonial administration on the other, to "Bamana country" in present-day Mali, formerly French Sudan, between 1880 and 1914. Through a comparative study of the corpus of objects now in the collections of MARKK and the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, consultation of archives in Germany, Mali and France, and surveys in the localities of origin in Mali, the project will analyze the political, scientific and local dimensions of these missions carried out in a French colonial context at the turn of the 20th century, and assess the conditions of object acquisition and appropriation from a specifically Malian perspective.
The aim is to review or identify the geographical provenance of the collections, to shed light on any specific features, and to put into perspective the conditions of appropriation of objects from sub-Saharan Africa in the context of competition between two colonial powers. A comparison of approaches to the objects held by the two museums, consultation of archival documents in Germany - mainly in the Frobenius Institute -, Mali and France, and research in the localities of origin in Mali, will enrich our understanding not only of acquisition practices, but also of the significance, local history and contemporary interpretation of these objects. One of the key challenges for the Malian team is to understand the aims and methods of these first collections in French Sudan (now the Republic of Mali), in order to understand the conditions of acquisition and appropriation of cultural goods, particularly ritual or religious objects in the Bamana environment, then in used in religious practices. The research will shed light on possible differences or parallels in the constitution of these collections, acquired on the one hand by a foreigner in French colonial territory and on the other by French colonials themselves, and put the issues of provenance of objects from sub-Saharan Africa into perspective in the context of competition between two expanding colonial empires.
Mask ceremony of the Komo society near Koumi, Mali. Oil on canvas, Fritz Nansen, 1907 (EBA-B 00256)
