Inside Dakar’s Musée Dynamique: reflections on culture and the state in postcolonial Senegal

Abstract

In November 2016, a conference was held in Dakar to mark the 50th anniversary of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, which had been held in the city from 1 to 24 April 1966. The conference closed with the public reading of a declaration that the organizers would later publish in the Senegalese daily newspaper, Le Soleil. One of its main demands was the restitution of the former Musée Dynamique to the Ministry for Culture. This was unsurprising, as the destiny of the museum had been a bone of contention between the government and key figures in the Senegalese cultural scene ever since the building was abruptly closed down in December 1988 and handed over to the judiciary as the new home for Senegal’s Supreme Court. The authors of this essay embarked on a research trip to Dakar in November 2016 to attend the 50th anniversary conference to photograph the Musée Dynamique as it is today: the intention was, as far as possible, to create a visual project centred on a rephotographing of the museum, contrasting the utopian vision of the festival organizers with its current status. The framework for our project changed somewhat, however, following President Macky Sall’s announcement that the building would soon be returned to the arts community. The aim of this visual essay is now thus primarily to examine more closely the nature, purpose and evolution of the museum building. What exactly is the nature of the building about to be returned to the arts community?

Keywords:

• museum
• festival
• Senegal
• object-witness

Notes on contributors

David Murphy is Professor of French at the University of Strathclyde. He is the editor of The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966 (Liverpool UP, 2016).

Cédric Vincent is a researcher affiliated with the Institut Interdisciplinaire d'Anthropologie du Contemporain at the EHESS (Paris). He also teaches art theory at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Toulon).

Notes

1 For an overview of the 1966 festival, see Murphy (2016). On the ‘Negro Art’ exhibition, see Vincent (2016). Please note portions of this essay text are based on previous work (esp. Murphy 2016), with amendments and complementary illustrations.

2 The authors would like to express their gratitude to Charles Becker and Abdoul Aziz Guissé for their kind assistance on the ground in Dakar.

3 The notion of ‘biography’ is taken from the groundbreaking book, The Social Life of Things (1986), edited by the anthropologist, Arjun Appadurai.

4 This project is situated within the framework outlined by scholars such as historian Daniel Maudlin and architectural anthropologist Marcel Vellinga (2014).

5 On the equally tumultuous history of the IFAN museum, see de Suremain (2007).

6 In the early stages of planning, the organizers carried out an assessment of the infrastructural improvements required in order for Dakar to be in a position to successfully host a festival on this scale and had identified the need both for new artistic spaces to be constructed and for the city’s hotel capacity to be greatly increased. This led to major work. Shantytowns were cleared, brand new roads were carved through the city, and a new terminal was built at the airport, complete with a mural (The Sun Bird) by Senegalese painter Iba N’diaye.

7 Jean Gabus, Rapport Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel année 1966, Archives du Musée d’ethnographie, Neuchâtel, p.140. All translations from the French are by the authors.

8 Letter from Jean Gabus to Michel Chesneau dated 1 June 1964. Archives du Musée d’ethnographie, Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, file 1422, ‘Musée dynamique: correspondance des architects Michel Chesneau and Jean Verola’.

9 In the 1970s, Gabus was invited to develop another Musée Dynamique, in Nouakchott (Mauritania), this time with a greater dialogue between the institution’s function as a ‘static’ and a ‘dynamic’ museum, but in the end the project did not proceed.

10 It should be noted that Huchard’s use of the term ‘object-witness’ was introduced into museographical discourse by Gabus (1975).

11 The Magic Land fun fair occupies a site of over 12,500 m² and was opened in 2004 by President Wade.

12 Decree on the creation and organization of the Musée Dynamique, 19 February 1966 (cited in Huchard 2010, 739–41).

13 The circumstances surrounding the closure of the museum are recounted in detail by Huchard (2010, 458–79).

14 At the time of writing (December 2018), there has still been no official confirmation regarding the museum’s return to its original arts vocation.

15 In April 2016, in a one-off event linked to the biennial Dak’art arts fair, the public was able to see 23 restored works (tapestries and paintings) from the collection exhibited in the main hall of the Supreme Court.

16 For more on the cultural policies of newly independent Senegal, see Snipe (1998) and Harney (2004).