Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The seaside Musée Dynamique in Dakar looks something like a hard-edged, flat-roofed Greek temple: Pericles meets Le Corbusier meets the Senegalese shore (Fig. 1). In April 1966, only six years after Senegal's independence from France, the art museum's doors opened to the public during the First World Festival of Negro Arts. Amid a broader celebration of Négritude and the arts, visitors gathered inside to see Negro Art: Sources, Evolution, Expansion (LArt Nègre: Sources, Évolution, Expansion), in which Benin “bronzes,” Kuba textiles, Gelede masks, and some 500 other historical objects were brought together in the largest exhibition of African art ever to have been staged on the continent (Fig. 2). Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor declared the art museum to be the festival's “most meaningful testament” (Senghor 1966: 6). His enthusiasm was shared by the international press, who photographed and discussed it in scores.1 As tens of thousands of visitors from around the world saw the Musée Dynamique either in person or in print, the museum did more than provide a well-equipped space in which to view objects. It was also a material expression of the reconciliatory role that art, Africa, and the nation of Senegal might play amid the fraught international landscape of the 1960s.With the devastation of World War II close in memory, the still-unknown future of independent Africa on the horizon, and the fractures of the Cold War omnipresent, a tense international climate surrounded the decision of the French government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to collaborate with Senegal in developing the Musée Dynamique. The museum had no permanent collection and was instead intended to accommodate an ever-updating roster of temporary, loanbased exhibitions. Indeed, its future offerings included topics ranging from the contemporary arts of Senegal to drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci.2 But its inaugural exhibition, Negro Art, accounted for much of the motivation behind its construction. The exhibition was organized by a committee that included three members from West Africa, three members from France, and one from UNESCO.3 One of the exhibition's French co-commissioners, Georges-Henri Rivière, said the museum's international panel of organizers were moved to collaborate on its construction by what he called “three clear, generous ideas”: the desire of Senghor to mount a major exhibition of African art in Dakar; the wish of French Minister of Culture André Malraux to facilitate a similar display in Paris; and the goal of UNESCO to create a “pilot museum” in Senegal, anticipating the Organization's increased involvement on the African continent (Rivière 1966: xxxvi).Though the organizers portrayed the initiatives surrounding the museum to be simple, their alignment required a formidable reconciliation of agendas. Lodged into the spaces beneath its floorplan and behind its façades, concerns quietly affected the construction of the Musée Dynamique. How does an art museum honor Négritude's particular stake in African identity and UNESCO's stake in universal humanism?4 Could architecture built in collaboration with the former colonizer, France, effectively express the nationhood of a newly independent Senegal? And what viewpoint would this construction occupy amid the era's many rivalries—between the eastern and western blocs, and between newly formed African nations?When considered as a material response to these questions, the Musée Dynamique provides a foothold from which to examine the role of art, architecture, and the museum in mediating the theories of cosmopolitanism that shaped international relations of the mid- to late-twentieth century. Primarily the outcome of dialogues between representatives of UNESCO and the Senegalese government, the Museum testifies to the exchange, compromise, and mutual influence linking the cultural theories of each organization. Drawing upon the archives of France, Senegal, and UNESCO, this article identifies the practical and political negotiations conditioning the construction of the Musée Dynamique, before examining the ideological work performed by its architecture. The pages that follow discuss the effects of the Museum's allusions to architectural modernism, to a modestly sized ethnography museum in Switzerland, and finally, to Greco-Roman antiquity. Each of these three reference points, cited in the museum's forms, represents a distinct route through which to express the ideals of universalism. Together, interwoven points of reference allowed the art museum to accommodate multiple mid-century approaches to intercultural relations.While several scholars have rightly identified the cultural imperialism inherent in upholding European aesthetics and values as universal (for example, the human proportions of the Greek temple, or Le Corbusier's subsequent Modulor), less attention has been paid to the meanings that forms associated with the universalist conceit might hold for African politicians, architects, and critics. In the absence of such analysis, African nations have too often been assigned a passive role in the development of cosmopolitanist thought and architecture, precluding the possible meanings that such architecture can acquire in, for example, a newly independent Senegalese capital. To make legible these multiple meanings, this essay proposes the “spiral” and the “crossroads” as emblems of the distinct humanist visions espoused by UNESCO and the Senegalese government, respectively.The origins of the Musée Dynamique extend to the earliest days of Senegal's independence in 1960. As president, Senghor considered artistic programming to be a lead priority for the burgeoning nation. He viewed cultural development to be indispensable, even prerequisite, to political and economic health.5 This belief drove his legendary investment in literature, theater, film, and other art forms in Senegal. A testament to such prioritization of the arts, Senegal was not yet an eight-month-old state when its minister Alioune Diop wrote to the Director-General of UNESCO to propose a partnership (Diop 1960). Diop requested UNESCO's support in planning a multimedia cultural festival in 1961 to mark the first anniversary of Senegalese independence.The Senegalese minister's appeal was met with skepticism. The UNESCO representative judged the festival to be too ambitious to be achieved within the proposed timeframe (Dard 1960). Furthermore, UNESCO had never before sponsored a festival and was reluctant to set such a precedent. But by the time that 1961 arrived, the Festival's target date had been delayed to 1963 and its function thus became less clearly linked to commemorating Senegalese independence and more devoted to mounting, in Senghor's words, a “defense and illustration of Négritude” (Senghor 1966a). With this shift towards a more transnational purpose, UNESCO's trepidation subsided. The organization promised to send an expert on its behalf to help with only one section of the broader festival: a museum exhibition and accompanying colloquium (“Dr. Adiseshiah's Mission,” n.d.).If festivals had been unfamiliar undertakings for UNESCO, museums certainly were not. Museums had long been used in the name of UNESCO's stated mission to deter international conflict through educational, scientific, and cultural initiatives (see “Museum and Museums,” 1948.) In 1948, seeking to create a forum through which museum professionals could share ideas, UNESCO founded the journal Museum. In its pages, André Leveillé, then-president of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), unironically called for UNESCO to lead a “museum crusade” (Leveillé 1949; see also Allais 2018). By likening the global promotion of museums to histories of Christian imperialism, Leveillé's words betray the Eurocentrism enabling UNESCO's utopic portrayal of museums. (On the imperialist character of UNESCO's museum projects, see Knodel and Reubi 2022.) Throughout the preceding century, museums had often been constructed in colonized regions as instruments of European expansion and exploitation. Still, in 1956, under the banner of global harmony, UNESCO launched an International Campaign for Museums. Throughout this campaign, the organization opened museum spaces and facilitated related programs on six continents(Leveillé 1956).UNESCO's track record planting museums around the world was thus well established by March 1963, when the Swiss ethnographer Jean Gabus arrived in Dakar as the organization's representative. Gabus had traveled from Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where he directed the small lakeside city's ethnographic museum. Moreover, he had acted as a museum consultant for UNESCO since 1957, when, on its behalf, he led the reorganization of the National Museum of Kabul in Afghanistan (Centlivres 1993: 182). By the time the United Nations’ contribution to the Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres was realized, he would already have assisted with the creation of a museologist training center in Jos, Nigeria, and a conservation project at the Royal Palaces of Abomey in Dahomey (see Allais 2018).Responding to the Senegalese minister's request for support, Gabus visited Dakar for nine days to examine its mu- seological resources and needs. This goal led him early on to the building of the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar, a research institute and museum founded in 1936 to serve the colonialist agenda of the French government. Its cream-colored, deco facades typified French colonial architecture of the interwar years (Fig. 3). In preliminary meetings, IFAN had been favored by the Senegalese organizing committee as a venue for the planned exhibition. But Gabus lamented its limited lighting and space and warned that its aging facilities might deter potential lenders from allowing their works to appear (Gabus 1963b: 2).6 What Dakar really needed, he thought, was a completely new museum. He envisioned that the new museum would host several temporary exhibitions rather than a static display, suggesting that it accommodate transformable walls that could be reconfigured in various combinations.Just a week after Gabus's departure, the Senegalese Ministry of Education and the Dakar-based French and Italian architects who would build the museum, Michel Chesneau and Jean Verola, issued a tentative blueprint for the building. Chesneau, notably, had founded the Regional Council of Architects of West Africa and Togo in 1949, composed mostly of French settler architects based in Dakar (Dione 1992). Chesneau and Verola's proposed museum was balanced and rectilinear, surrounded by slim columns, with a flat roof and unornamented surface (Fig. 4). Indoors, its floor plan was almost entirely open. A staircase led visitors to an L-shaped mezzanine overlooking the ground floor, with sufficient space to host its own displays.The museum's organizers approved of this design and drew up a budget (Gabus 1963a). UNESCO covered many of the costs related to the Museum's debut, assuming the fees associated with the Swiss museologist's labor and the fabrication of vitrines.7 But the expense of building the new museum itself fell upon the Senegalese committee and whatever donors it could cultivate. Gabus estimated that the construction would cost 70 a well the that the Senegalese committee had But Gabus that this investment would in more than He exhibition building cultural multiple with African as well as with or words that he considered the museum he to be a that was legible Indeed, the construction of the Dakar museum would be a of his belief in the Its floorplan in a of a constructed to his the Museum. The Museum had a years after its in Gabus a new intended to host temporary exhibitions as a to the display of its permanent Gabus could an role distinct from their permanent He wrote that the of the museum's was to in with one through objects that allowed to at the of a (Gabus permanent collection could a limited of he that could visitors to only in and Gabus thought that temporary could a more and and he the new devoted to this at the Switzerland, the name of the Musée Dynamique thus to the between walls as various and were But the art museum was also in its own the as its floorplan was from the of the and upon the Senegalese its display and facilities that Gabus had for (Fig. such Gabus that his had universal He his were to in a lakeside Swiss and a burgeoning West African Dakar was only the Gabus upon the construction of yet set to the plan more in where the proposed new was planned as an to the National Museum of was never see Knodel The Musée Dynamique for a of The of his floorplan its of Gabus's plan testifies to the ideals that UNESCO identified with contemporary museums. The of a of Museum that play a more role in the museum architecture of and The museum, the be to in and its in UNESCO that museum architecture be well in its and with A testament to these the for UNESCO's International Campaign for Museums not of or was by a a of the (Fig. 6). likening the museum to the and various of and art, UNESCO's that the museum's to and to the And when the through which he space in his Gabus to Le Corbusier's and even the upon to have universal to their in and (Gabus design of UNESCO and Gabus to the of that have long to the of architecture more that the Musée Dynamique upon the of a Swiss the of UNESCO, and the of a French architectural might the in the of and represents a of rather than the of European in the for only of a cultural and political often overlooking the and of African in cosmopolitanist thought and architecture. As has in to or art, the of African as and of architecture has been to such upon labor 2). But this the material and that the that a building might hold forms of and of the economic of its construction. of this to the of African and in architecture. By only African from in their also African from their and the that project of the Musée Dynamique the influence of by members the Senegalese government, who or the before Senghor and his UNESCO's ideals to an the organization's and Gabus's floorplan and to of the universal by the But as the section UNESCO's influence was not of the museum's like its appeal to the ideals for the Senegalese government and within contemporary African and of that this and to the of a West African and its amid the global of It does make a for of the of from Senghor's programs the Indeed, major with the years of the Museum's planning and construction. this broader climate only its to the utopic through which Senghor his own a for as an ideological the Senghor's the construction of Musée Dynamique was of a broader investment in arts and intended to a new identity in the of French architecture and planning had the the and since when Dakar as the of French West the the into new through like and such see constructed like the built in of upon the through their facades (Fig. (see The building in colonial Dakar with the of its colonial example, the the of in by the of West African architecture built for European like the of African and The Institut of architecture with of (Fig. (On such architecture, see in 1948, was as of French West Africa, shift in colonial architecture. He drew upon through the to a of new and in these a new architectural was in the architecture, like the the (Fig. of architectural was by the Senghor's government of the French architects in construction projects, Chesneau, the of the for the Musée Dynamique, in Dakar (see unornamented forms, to the before became of the new political the colonial also became independent Senegal's only after of its and (Dione The Musée Dynamique was also of a broader in building that around independence in In an essay for the Festival's Senghor's such building as an of a new and a construction performed a of the colonial into an African capital. the on behalf he the surrounding like the Musée Dynamique The utopic surrounding can be in by the that such architecture, of a As the of colonial many that in to the architecture, as architectural and have was often to serve this the of Senghor and his this purpose, by an of Senegal's in a broader As art a by the Senegalese government in the identifies Senegal as a of the the nation as an amid global and thus as a for (Fig. In to the economic of the international and of Senegal, often the arts, was a of Senghor's his inaugural for the Senghor the of Senegal's cosmopolitanism to visitors from Senegal has to be the of and Senegal to be (Senghor With to the Musée Dynamique, an international was considered from the since the museum's was planned to with the In of the festival that Senegalese were by an international in the earliest days (see who could not the museum in person could have it in the pages of their as of the museum amid and and Senegalese art the Musée from to the museum's role on the international it as an to a cultural at nations of the world on the of The Senegalese government of the portrayed the Musée the broader architectural of in the that of nations and related to one to the Museum was in to a to through which exhibitions could be staged in to international cultural this practical purpose, like UNESCO, the Museum as a through which to a more of To to the shared of the of with similar Senghor his of a this time the of on the of (Senghor His words the character of to for example, the of in to the mission of French the of see the Senghor his surrounding Négritude as of a broader mission devoted to the of of a project that he called the of the He portrayed the of the as a world in which of intercultural would each relations and allowing to their Senghor UNESCO as an influence the his and had since his early on Négritude in the that the organization had Festival and the Musée Dynamique were of Senghor's to make Dakar a to facilitate the of cultural he to human But the of Senghor's of from of UNESCO's of the museum might be by the of a to can be as a a of an less by inherent by what that which through the of intercultural has called the of of the and Dakar Dynamique the in the universalist visions of Gabus and the museum's their in In Neuchâtel, the of the Musée Dynamique covered by a by the Swiss (Fig. The of as it was arts from around the of and Its regions by the Africa, and the A of an the that the various a human towards and (Fig. the the the a of each one to the regions in the The in a to a in the universalist to global reconciliation that UNESCO Gabus these to in the of the Dakar museum. He proposed that make for Senegal's Musée Dynamique, as to the Dakar-based committee that the to the exhibition of African art of (Gabus was by the Senegalese organizing In one have such it could only be by the African of Benin or African the investment of the Festival in and the of in Dakar, one might that the between the and Dakar museums would the of African architectural and design that the building would the flat of its with by one of Senegal's But the of the Dakar Musée Dynamique does not of In to the the Dakar building has been to a and its walls have been by a that the Dakar with the of the that Senghor upon the Museum's upon the between Africa and the He that the which in drew upon the art, and of He Senghor's on the of the Festival Africa and the arts of the continent through to antiquity. This the words of the festival's and as Gabus to the of and through the inaugural exhibition (Gabus called for the permanent of the exhibition's objects to Africa that the continent of the of of the arts, also like allusions by African and who cited the as discussed the development of their own of the had been in where an of Senghor identified as a and Greek and in In the as the political a in which he the of Greco-Roman to the by and the of In a of the was as a of to and was a through which their of to be the to Greek in the of thought of African cultural in which to with the Africa has to of Africa has to that can be as as the to to the in of African identity was to be in the of By with Greco-Roman and the historical between could the between the European and African through historical other than and in could shared cultural ground with other than in France, or the century, of the linking the histories of the and Africa In Senegal, Diop for to in Negro Nations and in the The of The Negro brought to between the and upon the walls of the (Fig. In the a of at the of in that Greek had no the of the African was by as a to Senghor's of to was one many to the to The Museum's architectural allusions to make upon an cultural Greek was not as a of European the of an which Africa as a a This would be in the Senghor of years after the it (Senghor the Museum's architectural to the would have the of African and European an of the that he proposed were when each its towards the of towards the of the to which he The museum's to Greek thus not only a historical also a of in the the museum and the where it as a contemporary of of Musée Dynamique testifies to the of multiple in the of a shared and for the utopic of the and the the and the the Musée Dynamique an a linked to its upon its and by a when the architecture of Africa, it to hold in with one This the of political of that might for example, or as either or or also an to of by their goal to a more and can be from one to the upon which Senghor's towards an Gabus's a universalism. By together the and the the Musée Dynamique a of the that thought and mid- cosmopolitanism one the role of art and architecture in their
Source: African Arts
DOI: 10.1162/afar_a_00785
Author: Lauren Taylor
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4405364500