Hundreds of artworks by mainly Black Brazilian artists are returning home

Sep 5, 2024 Story by: Editor

In a significant move reflecting a global effort to return artworks to their places of origin, around 750 pieces created mainly by Black Brazilian artists are set to return home after being displayed in museums throughout the United States and Canada.

These artworks—comprising sculptures, paintings, prints, religious items, festival costumes, toys, and poetry booklets—have been outside Brazil for over 30 years and are being donated to a museum located in Bahia, the state with the highest population of Black residents in the country.

Approximately 80% of Bahia’s population is of African descent, which is considerably higher than the national average of 55%. Bahia stands as a hub of Afro-Brazilian culture, with its art, cuisine, and religious practices heavily influenced by Yoruba traditions.

The collection of works being repatriated, referred to as "popular art" due to their creation by self-taught artists, left Brazil following a 1992 visit by US art historian Marion Jackson and artist Barbara Cervenka to Salvador, Bahia’s capital.

The pair traveled to Bahia after being invited by an African American artist friend to explore non-European arts. “At first, it felt like a cacophony of things. But as we looked further, we began to distinguish who was creating these pieces and what was happening. We met the artists, came back [to the US], took stuff back with us and came back [to Brazil],” Cervenka noted.

From 1992 to 2012, while working as professors at the University of Michigan , the two friends made at least one annual trip to Brazil during their summer vacations.

They primarily purchased the artworks directly from the artists—“a little bit through grants, but mostly through our own resources,” as Cervenka mentioned—though some pieces were received as gifts.

While the majority of the collection features artists from Bahia, it also includes works from Pernambuco and Ceará, located in Brazil's northeast region. “The real challenge was bringing them [to the US],” Jackson recalled.

The collection encompasses 750 pieces from nearly 100 artists, with sizes ranging from Lena da Bahia's painting *Procession of the Sisterhood of the Boa Morte* to a large wooden sculpture named *Oxalá*, measuring 7 feet tall and resembling a tree trunk. This piece was crafted by Celestino Gama da Silva, also known as Louco Filho, in honor of his father, artist Boaventura da Silva Filho, who was nicknamed Louco.

Transporting this massive artwork required sending a small truck to Cachoeira, about 120 kilometers from Salvador, along with purchasing several mattresses to protect it during shipping.

“We put the collection together initially to open cultural doors between North and South America,” Jackson said.

To facilitate the exhibitions, they founded a non-profit organization named Con/Vida . A fact sheet for one of the exhibitions pointed out, “How many North Americans know that ten times more Africans were brought into slavery into Brazil than into the United States?”

An estimated 4.86 million enslaved Africans were brought to Brazil during the transatlantic slave trade, while the US received approximately 388,000, according to estimates from the SlaveVoyages database. Notably, even within Brazil, awareness of these figures is limited.

This lack of awareness stems from the country's ongoing struggle to confront its history, according to Jamile Coelho, one of the directors of the National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Muncab) , which will accept Jackson and Cervenka’s donation. “Valuing Afro-diasporic artists is a very recent process,” Coelho stated, adding, “Even today, Black artists are ignored in art schools.”

Despite being home to a majority Black population, Brazil has very few museums dedicated exclusively to the history of its Black residents, with the largest being the Afro Brasil museum located in São Paulo.

Coelho views the repatriation of these 750 pieces as part of a broader global movement to return cultural artifacts to their countries of origin. However, she highlights a significant distinction in this case, as these items were not “stolen” like many held in “most European museums.” “That’s not the case for what we’re about to receive. We verified that these were legal purchases,” the museum director explained, adding, “Nevertheless, they [Con/Vida] still understood the importance of returning these works to Brazil.”

Discussions are ongoing regarding the logistics of sending the pieces, currently stored in an office in Detroit. “We hope to do it within the next year,” Cervenka expressed.

Once the pieces arrive and are exhibited in Salvador, Muncab plans to lend them to other exhibitions across Brazil.

Conversations about the repatriation began last year, and Cervenka shared their rationale for proceeding at this time: “As we’ve gotten older [she is 85; Jackson is 83], we realized that we couldn’t continue in the same way with the kind of energy that a project like this needs. So we wanted to ensure that these pieces had a future.”

Their collection also included Peruvian artifacts, which were recently donated to the Lima Art Museum and the Michigan State University Broad Art Museum .

For Jackson, the fortunate aspect of this initiative is that many of the artists are still living. “So they, their families, and their communities can come and see their work in a museum of real stature. And really being celebrated and recognised as a significant part of Brazilian culture is, I mean, it’s all we could hope for,” she remarked. Source: The Guardian