A collection made up of 585 Brazilian Indigenous objects that had been in France unlawfully for 15 years has finally returned to the country – and Art Quality, a partner of Clé Reserva Contemporânea, was the company responsible for the repatriation operation. The arrival of the collection on 10 July, at Guarulhos Airport, was announced by the president of Funai, Joenia Wapichana, as a great victory.
And with good reason: the objects were lent in 2004 to the Musée d'histoire naturelle de Lille, for a period of five years. Once that period was over, the institution requested an extension, but the process was never completed. In 2015, the Brazilian government began the formal request for the pieces to be returned, a process led by the Ministério Público Federal (MPF), with the support of Itamaraty, the Museu Nacional dos Povos Indígenas and Funai.
The set includes headdresses, earrings, armbands, rattles and masks produced in the 20th century by 39 Indigenous peoples from Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Tocantins and Roraima. One of the highlights is the Cara-Grande mask, of the Tapirapé people, from Mato Grosso, which can be up to 1.6 metres wide and 1.3 metres long.
The transport of the pieces to Brazil was preceded by a technical inspection of the whole collection in Lille, before the packing and transport by lorry to a specialist warehouse in Paris. There, the entire collection underwent anoxia treatment – a process that involves leaving the pieces in containers from which all the oxygen is removed, so as to eliminate biological agents (such as fungi or moths) that may have settled in them.
The entire repatriation operation on French soil was carried out by Chenue, a century-old French company that is an international leader in fine art logistics and a partner in Clé Reserva Contemporânea.
After that, the pieces were packed again for the flight to Brazil. They are now awaiting the completion of customs procedures at Guarulhos Airport and will then be transported to the Museu dos Povos Indígenas, in Rio de Janeiro.
Specialising in the transport of artworks and museum collections throughout Brazil, Art Quality also works on import, export, expatriation and repatriation processes for objects, as in this case, drawing on an international network of equally specialised logistics partners. Find out more about the company.
