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Italians bid to borrow Mona Lisa

Authorities in Florence on Thursday asked the Louvre Museum to loan them Leonardo's closely-guarded Mona Lisa for an exhibit in 2013 – 100 years since the last time the work was displayed in Italy.

Italians bid to borrow Mona Lisa

The appeal to France came from an Italian historical society and has received support from Florence’s provincial government, which announced the initative on its website and said it would seek to widen the campaign.

The precious painting was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by an Italian who was arrested in 1913 after trying to sell it to an antiques dealer in Florence.   

The Mona Lisa was briefly put on display in the Uffizi Gallery before being returned to France, where it has been since it was painted in the 16th century.

“This is not a declaration of war against France. It’s an appeal aimed at collaboration,” said Silvano Vinceti, the head of a historical society organising the improbable appeal together with the province of Florence.

“This would be an event of enormous cultural and historic value as well as a marvellous occasion for the whole of Italy,” he said.

“The Gioconda has left the Louvre museum three times. It can do so again.”   

Vinceti said the aim was to collect 100,000 signatures within the next few months and to lobby the Italian parliament to back the campaign, which will appeal directly to the Louvre and to the French ministry of culture.

A spokesman for Florence’s provincial government said: “We are supporting this. We will try and get more backing from city and regional authorities too.”

The rivalry between Italy and France over ownership of the Mona Lisa is a saga spanning centuries and still stirs passions on both sides of the border.

Leonardo is believed to have started the work in Italy and finished it in France.

It is now jealously guarded by the Louvre and was last taken out of the famous Paris museum in 1974 when it was loaned to Tokyo in an exceptional move – the only time the painting has left the country since its theft.

Vinceti is leading a team of archaeologists digging up a former convent in the centre of Florence to try and find the remains of Lisa Gherardini, the woman believed to be the model for Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting.

ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old toldĀ AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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