“Museum of Fine Arts has played a fundamental role for national art” in Algeria. Interview with the director and chief curator of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers about the current role and future challenges of the largest art museum on the African continent. Dalila Orfali tells us about the collection’s jewels, youth, digital, restitution and her vision for 2030.
RFI: In France, all museums are currently still closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. How is the situation in Algeria??
Dalila Ofali: In Algeria, museums are not closed at all. The museums have reopened since September. On the contrary, we have an audience, an audience especially of young people, because the elderly stay a little and stay at home.
What is the unique side of the National Museum of Art in Algiers, which is one of the largest art museums in Africa?
It is the most important museum in Africa if we talk about art museums. We have a universal collection with a large part of Algerian art, the largest in Algeria, and also a large part of modern art, both Maghreb and Arabic art, the largest in North Africa. The museum’s unique side is its old collection, but also its building, a historical monument classified since 1995. An art deco building located in a historic district in the city of Algiers and already in itself a monument to visit.
In addition to the building, there is also the collection, which begins in the 14th century and extends to the 1980s and 1990s. We go no further, as there has been a museum of contemporary and modern art in Algiers since the 2000s.
When we talk about the Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, we often quote Les Rochers de Belle-Ile by Claude Monet or the great work of Algerian miniature, The History of Islam, by Mohamed Racim. What’s for you “Mona Lisa“from the museum?
The works of Mohamed Racim (1896-1975) are considered a national cultural treasure. They are completely unique. Racim shone a lot in Arab countries and was known worldwide. He gave birth to the Arabic miniature once more. In the early 20th century, an important period for Algeria, the colonial era, he tried to give his letters of nobility back to an art that was an Arab-Muslim art, but also Andalusian, Persian, Mughal, etc. At the same time he tried to give it an Algerian property.
There is also a very nice collection from the 19th century with for example Monet. We have Matisse and also a very nice collection for sculpture. Many great sculptors were born in Algiers and had awards from Rome, including Paul Belmondo, AndréGreck, etc. We have a thousand and one works of very high quality …
Who is the museum’s audience?
What is good is that we have a very large majority of the Algerian audience. Above all, many young people visit the museum. The reason is simple. Over the last twenty years, the museum has invested heavily in acquiring musical instruments, material for inauguration in the art, etc. Our art workshops have attracted a lot of young people, of course, since the pandemic we have had to close the art workshops.
Usually how many people visit the museum?
In Algeria, the most famous and highly regarded museums are not art museums but archeological museums because we are an archeological country. Of course, if you compare the number of visitors between the National Museum of Art and the Djemila site [une cité romaine classée patrimoine mondial par l’Unesco, ndlr], we have a very limited number of visitors because we do not have an extremely general public type collection, but rather elitist. Usually we have between 16,000 and 18,000 visitors a year.
Your collection embraces the art history of the six centuries, up to modern painters such as M’hamedIssiakhem (1928-1985) or MohamedKhadda (1930-1991). What place do you reserve today for contemporary art, and what role does your museum play for contemporary art or contemporary artists??
From 1962 to 2019, the museum played a fundamental role in national art. Why? First of all, it was the first institution – from the last months of 1962 – to acquire works for the purpose of forming the section for Algerian art. The museum has especially acquired the most prominent Algerian artists, such as Issiakhem or Khadda. In the 2000s also the younger generations. For the past ten years, the museum has been working to organize retrospective exhibitions of the big names in Algerian art every year. The last one, in December 2019, was dedicated to the painter FarèsBoukhatem, a big name from the time after independence.
Since the pandemic, many museums have changed their relationship with the public and the way they present. Has the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers also changed its capetin invested in digital tools?
To tell you the truth, we have not really invested in these tools. On the other hand, what we have done in these six months of the museum’s closure is to work on our website. We continued to provide online exhibits, documents about our collections, etc. We exchanged exhibits. The museum has lent virtual collections to the site of the Palais desRaïs regarding the city of Algiers, etc. We have established a kind of partnership in relation to our collections so that the Algerian public can benefit from them online. I can not say that we have invested financially [dans les outils numériques], since we have resumed the normal course since September.
The museum’s collection has always been a bridge between the two shores of the Mediterranean with Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Matisse and Algerian painters such as Baya or Khadda. Internationally, what is the museum’s most important collaboration with other museums on the African continent and outside Africa??
As in Africa, to my knowledge there are no other museums of the same typology as ours, there are not so many collaborations. On the other hand, we have collaborated with other continents, especially with the Japanese. We traded with some of our Impressionists. We have worked with many Italian museums. Last year we also signed an agreement with the Prado Museum in Madrid. And of course we also borrowed works for French museums. For example, a David during the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution or a very beautiful painting by Guillonnet at the La Rochelle Museum as part of a restoration contract.
Usually we choose exchanges that are fruitful on both sides. We do the same for our mosaics, archeological objects, etc. For example, we have very important tablets of the era of vandalism, almost unique in the Mediterranean world. They were lent out and in return Sweden restored them. In Africa, I know there is another painting by Monet in South Africa or an Impressionist collection in Cairo, but currently on the continent. African we did not have an exchange.
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The National Museum of Art in Algiers was opened to the public in 1930. More than thirty years later, just before Algeria’s independence, many works were transferred by the French to the Louvre before being reintroduced –«after tough negotiations»– at the Algiers Museum of Fine Arts in 1969.
Yes, but it’s an old story.
In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron launched a major debate on the return of African heritage. What do you think of this debate? Is the National Museum of Art in Algeria or other museums in Algeria affected by this question??
In my opinion, the Algiers National Museum of Art does not have a collection of collections affected by this kind of restitution. The debate that began in France concerns the return of property looted during the colonization period, ie. coins to Benin, etc. We are a museum of art. On the other hand, I believe that there is a part of our archaeological heritage that was actually taken in a way – I do not know how to qualify it … Of course, the countries whose memory has been corrupted claim the return of their history and their heritage. It is a natural thing when we want to ensure a nation’s identity and uniqueness. The national heritage is something fundamental.
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Algeria has had a lot of spoilages of archeological and historical properties, especially our cannons, our archives, etc. Especially in the first years of abuse committed by the French expeditionary force in the 19th century. At the National Museum of Fine Arts, we are not worried about the Commission[le rapport remis parFelwineSarret Bénédicte Savoy au président Macron se concentre uniquement au patrimoine subsaharien et préconise pour le cas d’Algérie «une mission et une réflexion spécifiques», ndlr], but you know Frantz Fanon’s expression: “leaving the colonial big night”. Countries that have been robbed of their memory are experiencing irreparable memory loss. I am African and I am Algerian, so it is fundamental to me that the basic objects that tell the history and memory of the peoples are returned.
In recent years, when young Algerian photographers exhibited their work in France, you could feel the desire of these artists to tell and describe their country. What is the role of a museum like the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers in relation to this question? And how do you envision your museum in 2030?
Algerian youth, to which all generations of Algerians – and I think this is the element that most characterizes us in relation to other Maghreb countries – we are extremely attached to our national values and especially the idea of belonging. No doubt, for we have suffered for a long time during the various occupations that our country has known. Young people today visit museums with memory typologies a lot. Why? Because there is still a need to adapt this historical memory.
It’s true, we, the Museum of Fine Arts, we’re telling you something else. We tell the story of creativity, imagination. But our duty is to continue to tell the story of our painting, of our painters – certainly in an increasingly digital, more and more modern way, perhaps in the form of comics or virtual products to reach people. Unfortunately, education on Algerian history was very often limited to the twentieth century. We are a country of sculptors, demos, engravers, painters. So one of our basic projects is to demonstrate the existence of Algerian art from prehistoric times to the present day and not to limit it to the twentieth century, as it has unfortunately been very often, and as this has often been desired.
►The site of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers, Algeria.
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