The museum as prison and other protective measures in socialist Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

In 1974 Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a revolution that ended Ethiopia’s long Imperial history and ushered in a military Marxist dictatorship. The challenge of what to do with Ethiopia’s vast royal and religious cultural heritage–of symbolic national and Pan-African significance–immediately presented itself. This article considers the treatment of the Ethiopia’s historic heritages in the wake of the Emperor’s fall, examining both acts of iconoclasm and the proliferation of a cultural heritage bureaucracy in keeping with a putatively socialist political agenda. Focusing specifically on a UNESCO report about the proposed new National Museum, this study explores efforts to recast Ethiopia’s national narrative within a ‘progressive’ framework, and the influence of Leninist attitudes towards ‘imperial’ heritage in the wake of revolution. The latter evidences the impact of Soviet heritage concepts, known in Addis through the circulation of Progress Publisher books from the later 1970s onwards, and through educational sojourns by Ethiopian intellectuals to Soviet cities. Though the revolution was a destructive, iconoclastic process in which many (including the Emperor) lost their lives, it left a curious legacy regarding national cultural heritage, the very definition of which was dramatically expanded to include much more than royal crowns and Orthodox treasures.

KEYWORDS:

• Socialism
• internationalism
• Ethiopia
• USSR
• Soviet Union
• UNESCO

Note on Transliteration and Ethiopian names

The transliteration of Amharic remains a source of some discussion. For clarity and consistency, I have opted to use to the Library of Congress Romanisation table, available at https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanisation/amharic.pdf. In Ethiopia, people are typically referred to by their first name only (the second name being that of one’s father), with polite designations and/or titles if necessary. To this end, artists and writers who I interviewed as part of my research are referred to by their full name first, and then first name only subsequently. When citing the work of Ethiopian scholars, however, I have referenced them in the same manner as I reference other scholars, by last name after the first citation.

Acknowledgments

Research for this study was partially funded by the Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art. I thank Fitsum Teferra for his assistance in the translation of Belayneh Asegu’s article. I thank Tibebe Terffa and Ayalneh Mulatu for sharing their archives, and their memories with me in Addis Ababa and in Washington D.C. I thank Yikunnoamlak Mezgebu of the National Archives and Library of Ethiopia for his permission to reproduce Figure 2. Finally, I thank Raymond Silverman for his suggestions for this text, and the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments on the first draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Tibebe Terffa identified himself as the artist of the central design in an interview with the author in July 2015.

2. The author’s copy of this text was purchased on a second hand bookstall in Piassa, Addis Ababa in 2014.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Cowcher

Kate Cowcher is Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews. She is a historian of art from Africa with a specific interest in Ethiopia, and in modern and contemporary practices. She holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MA from the University of Edinburgh. Her current book project examines art, film and politics during Ethiopia’s socialist revolution. Her broader research interests include art and cultural exchange in Africa during the Cold War, intersections of revolution, socialism and heritage on the continent, and histories of African modernist art. Her writing has been published in African Arts, Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, Art History and Art Bulletin.