The question put to us in the context of the examination of the present bill – that of the belonging of human remains to the collections of the museums of France – is one that fuels the controversy.
We all remember the exciting exchanges that took place, particularly in your High Assembly, when the remains of Saartjie Baartman – the “Venus Hottentote” were handed over to South Africa.
More recently, in 2007, the Maori head inscribed on the inventories of the Natural History Museum of Rouen put under the spotlight the problems posed by the conservation and possibly the presentation of human remains preserved in public collections.
Two conceptions are possible about the elements of the human body entered into the collections of museums.
The first focuses on the violence that is at the origin of what we call, for lack of a more dignified expression, the “human remains”. This violence can be medical, warrior or ritual. Such a conception raises doubts about the very possibility of transforming an element of the human body into a collector’s object.
The second vision places the human remains preserved in the public collections in a broader context: it encompasses the varied motives, most often scientific or historical, sometimes cultural, that justified, at a given time, special protection of these objects.
I think those two concepts can be reconciled. That’s the general feeling. Indeed, no one thinks of questioning the interest of preserving and presenting to the public the Egyptian mummies of the Louvre. The Egyptian museums themselves exhibit them in a space subject to additional fees, without seeing any contradiction with the respect due to the dignity of the human body.
I am therefore particularly honoured, for my first speech before your High Assembly as Minister of Culture, to take part in this essential debate for the French public collections. I wish him calm and balanced. We will, all together, try to reconcile, on the one hand, the ethical need to respond to the demands of the communities of origin of Maori heads and, on the other hand, our attachment to the integrity of public collections and the principle of inalienability, which is its legal translation.
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First, I would like to address the very specific case of Maori heads, which is the subject of Article 1 of the bill. The history of these artifacts is well known. Originally a ritual practice, demonstrating the respect of a tribe and a family for its dead, the mummification of heads has become, under the effect of the macabre curiosity of European travellers and collectors, the object of a particularly barbaric trade.
The Government fully shares the ethical concern underlying the approach of the author and rapporteur of the bill.
I would also like to recall that at no time did the Government take a position on the advisability of handing over to the New Zealand authorities the Maori head of the Rouen museum. The State’s intervention before the administrative court was merely motivated, in the context of the exercise of the review of legality, by the need to ensure respect for the procedures which the legislator surrounded the decommissioning of objects belonging to the collections of museums of France. In this case, the referral for opinion of the scientific commission established by the law of 4 January 2002 on museums in France.
On the importance of keeping heads in public collections, I would like to commend the rapporteur’s fine analysis. Having recalled that they had entered the collections only as objects of curiosity, and not of scientific study, Mr. RICHERT presented the problem in all its complexity.
According to the testimony gathered by the rapporteur, the heads preserved in our museums have never been the subject of extensive studies and are hardly of interest in the light of current anthropological methods.
However, as the rapporteur also points out, it is important to keep a record of this, so as not to leave a “void” in the knowledge of humanity, and even less in the memory of this less glorious episode in the history of European expansion.
On the legal arrangements chosen to encourage the handing over of Maori heads to the New Zealand authorities, your committee has chosen a wise solution, respectful of the freedom of each of the public authorities – state or commune – owners of Maori heads.
If, pursuant to Article 1 of the Bill, the Maori heads cease immediately to be part of the collections of the museums of France with a view to their being handed over to the Nouvelle-In Zeeland, it will be up to each owner to decommission them and negotiate the terms of their surrender with the New Zealand authorities.
The Quai Branly Museum and the natural history museums of the major regional metropolises – Rouen, of course, but also Marseille, Lyon, Lille and La Rochelle – will thus have the opportunity to accomplish this ethical gesture.
I will simply point out that, for the first time, the law organizes the release of the collections of museums in France from an entire category of elements, and not from a specific object.
For the future, I believe it is essential to equip ourselves with the means to prevent and regulate, very early and consensually – particularly between the State and the local authorities or their establishments – without having to resort to the legislator, difficulties that may arise with respect to other specific cases.
This is precisely the purpose of the following articles of the proposed law, added by your Committee on Cultural Affairs. In so doing, the latter wished to bring before your High Assembly the general question of the modalities for the decommissioning of objects belonging to the public collections.
The Government wishes to welcome the very timely nature of this initiative. It is in line with the conclusions presented by Jacques RIGAUD to the Minister of Culture and Communication in February 2008 concerning the modernization of the management of public collections.
In his report, Jacques RIGAUD strongly reaffirmed the inescapable nature of the principle of inalienability.
Inalienability lies at the very foundation of public collections, which are part of a very long-term time horizon. It has contributed over the centuries to the creation of a heritage that is today the pride and attraction of our cultural institutions.
Jacques RIGAUD, however, stressed the need for a real «breathing» of the collections, the use of the decommissioning possibilities offered by the heritage code was a possible modality. One of the proposals of the RIGAUD report was therefore to give its full scope to the law on museums in France, which provides for a decommissioning procedure which has remained strictly in force until now.
The initiative of your Committee on Cultural Affairs thus relays an objective of the Ministry of Culture.
The future National Scientific Commission on Collections, established by the proposed law, will reflect in its composition all the complexity of decommissioning issues, which are both scientific, cultural and ethical. The essential competence of the professionals of the conservation of the collections will thus be complemented by the point of view of the parliamentarians, the communities who own the collections, as well as that of eminent persons in other disciplines relevant to the examination of decommissioning projects: philosophy, law or anthropology…
This opening of the National Scientific Commission to the representatives of the Nation underlines the solemnity of the decommissioning procedure, and testifies to Parliament’s commitment to the principle of inalienability.
Furthermore, by extending to other public collections, to the National Contemporary Art Fund, as well as to the collections of the Regional Contemporary Art Funds, the compulsory or optional intervention of the National Scientific Commission, promotes the consideration of the scientific and cultural interest of the property concerned when making the choice to decommission or not.
I am also grateful to the members of the committee for having extended the assent procedure provided for in the French Museums Act for applications for the decommissioning of property belonging to public collections. This ensures that the owners of the collections take into account the expertise and representativeness of this body. This expanded scope will also make it possible, I hope, to define a general doctrine for all public collections.
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This bill therefore closes in a particularly happy way the controversy aroused in the autumn of 2007 by the cancellation of the deliberation of the city of Rouen on the restitution of the Maori head.
Above all, it marks the opening, for too long delayed in my view, of a real substantive debate on the use of decommissioning, since it gives public authorities the means to have a doctrine defined in perfect consultation.
The proposed legislation gives the Scientific Commission the power to set the doctrine and criteria that will allow the “breathing” of collections without compromising their integrity or diminishing the scope of the principle of inalienability. These guidelines will be presented very quickly in the report to Parliament within a relatively short period of one year.
For all these reasons, the Government is required to give a favourable opinion on this bill.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker and honourable senators, for your attention.