Friday 22 November 2013

Some ‘dumped’ African artefacts from ‘anonymous’ donor



In this era of controversies over the legitimacy or otherwise of acquisition of art pieces, particularly of African origin, by museums in the west, it does appear that someone has decided to take an easy way out by being an anonymous donor.
This much sources in the U.S. have revealed few days ago about what was described as “dropped off” of African artefacts at Goodwill stores in Washington State by “anonymous donor”.
Well, the art pieces are not exactly the high profile kind in the provenance context as the Benin artefacts that got Museums of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, into heated legitimacy issue last year and recently.
One of the artefacts displayed

The Goodwill mystery artefacts include sculptures and other objects trace to Cameroon, Tanzania, Congo and Mozambique origins.   

A source from the not-for profit Goodwill facility was quoted  as saying “We don’t know if they knew the value of the art. We would assume not because they just left it with one of our retail stores with nothing special”.

No comments:

Post a Comment