Negotiating Colonial History: African Arts Exhibitions in Contemporary French Museums

摘要

While a large part of the African art collections exhibited in French public museums originated from the former colonial empire, the evocation of this part of history is still met with difficulties in contemporary France, impacting the presentation and treatment of the works themselves. This thesis aims at evoking the zones of silence surrounding the displays of these collections, understood as revealing of the country’s contemporary difficulties to address its colonial past. How could the exhibition of African arts in French public museums be understood as symptomatic of the country’s contemporary difficulties encountered in the discussion of its colonial past?