France Is Seeking Proposals for a New Public Monument to Memorialize Victims of Slavery, Destined for Paris’s Tuileries Gardens

France is commissioning a new
monument memorializing the victims of slavery—and it’s asking the
public for ideas.

Last week, the country’s
ministry of culture launched an open call for the design and
production of the public work, which will be installed in Paris’s
Tuileries Gardens, next to the Musée du Louvre. 

“This project expresses the
desire to honor the victims of slavery and to recognize their
invaluable contribution to the nation,” the prompt for the open
call reads. “The
memorial aims to be a commemorative place” that has “a strong
educational dimension.”

The Representative Council of
France’s Black Associations, an advocacy organization that has been
among the most vocal in calling for the creation of the monument,
supported the move—with one caveat. “The artist chosen must be of African descent,”
the council’s former president Louis-Georges Tin told
The Art
Newspaper.

The project was initially
announced in 2016 when former French president François Hollande
established a foundation to oversee the creation of a slavery
memorial and dedicated museum. Hollande’s vision was echoed by his
successor, Emmanuel Macron, who, in April 2018—on the 170th
anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the French
colonies—vowed to realize the memorial and museum. 

“The foundation will put slavery
back into the long history of France, from the first French
colonial empire to the present day,” Macron said at the
time.

But little tangible progress had
been made on the development of the either undertaking until
now. “Hollande’s idea
ultimately came to nothing,” Tin told TAN.
“A memorial is a good idea but a museum would be better. It is high
time we had a museum in Paris; there also needs to be some kind of
financial compensation.”

The council plans to file a
report with the new mayor of Paris, who will be elected this
summer, outlining plans for a museum, Tin adds. 

The deadline for monument
proposals is September 1, with the chosen artist set to be
announced early next year. The final monument is scheduled to be
installed by the fall of 2021.

The post France Is Seeking Proposals for a New Public
Monument to Memorialize Victims of Slavery, Destined for Paris’s
Tuileries Gardens appeared first on artnet News.