Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the complex intersections between the market of traditional African art and museum displays in African and in the West. While both museological settings present a reflection on culture, beauty is mostly the result of a denial of contradictory historical and market relations.

Paper long abstract:

In the last four decades the academic discourse on African art has expanded its scope. Yet, when it comes to the art market and Western museum displays, canonical definitions of authenticity still hold strong: "traditional" objects are usually included in virtue of their pedigree and stylistic conformity. "Ethical" acquisitions of African antiquities require that museums do not acquire pieces exported after the ratification of the 1970 Unesco convention on Cultural property. This practice has affected, at least ideally, the presentation of presentation of "traditional" African arts and cultures in Western museums. A visit to 12 small museums in central and western Cameroon has presented me with a very different selection of objects placed on display: commercial, "spurious," "non-canonical" or just simply "wrong". This paper reflects on the one hand, on the contradictory field of the market of traditional African art, which continues to thrive in complex and interesting ways despite international conventions. On the other, I look at African museum as a challenge to Western taxonomies and expertise as new material meanings are constructed pushing the limits of our canonical understanding and of ideas of beauty and value. I suggest that the heterogeneous and inconsistent collections of the Grassfields' museums may be read as more authentic translations of the complexity, contradiction, global connections and historical developments of the cultural milieus in which they are located than the purified and canonized representations celebrated in western displays, where beauty is often the result of the stripping or even the denial of history.