PROBAMA

The aim of this Franco-German-Malian project is to compare and assess the acquisition practices and object categories of two museum collections assembled during the period of French colonial rule. On the one hand, it concerns the collections gathered by the German Africanist Leo Frobenius on behalf of the former Museum of Ethnology in Hamburg; on the other, the holdings of the Musée du quai Branly, which were brought back between 1880 and 1914 by soldiers, so-called explorers, and scholars working under the French colonial administration in the “Bamana country”, located in present-day Mali, formerly part of the French Sudan. By comparing these two groups of objects, consulting archives in Germany, Mali, and France, and conducting interviews in the original collection sites in Mali, the project seeks to analyze — primarily from a Malian perspective — the political, scientific, and local dimensions of these collections acquired in the French colonial context at the turn of the twentieth century.

The study aims to determine the geographical origins of the collections, to identify possible similarities or differences in the composition of object categories — particularly those of ritual or religious Bamana artifacts. This approach is also expected to provide new insights into the conditions under which so-called ethnographic objects were acquired in sub-Saharan Africa, within the framework of the competition between colonial powers. More broadly, the project seeks to shed light on the processes of appropriation of objects — especially those from religious and ritual contexts — and to identify instances of unlawful acquisition.