Tribal art

For a long time, tribal art was sold on aesthetics and rarity alone. Today's buyers ask for documented provenance, which establishes how and when the object left its country of origin. Objects with a clear history have seen their prices rise; those with a patchy history have been marked down.

The royal Songye Mask, sold for €38.7 million, owes its price to impeccable provenance: collected in 1910 by a missionary whose archives are preserved, it belonged to three successive collectors, all documented.

Since 2012, 847 works have been returned to their countries of origin, several with OIMAP's support. The Member States have adopted a restitution charter, which frames requests, sets up review commissions and promotes negotiated solutions.

For a buyer, this means that an acquired work must be able to withstand a provenance review. OIMAP recommends never buying a piece of archaeological origin without an export authorisation from the country of origin.

Increasingly, countries of origin take part in decisions concerning their heritage. They create museums, publish inventories and demand provenance documents. Several of them have become OIMAP members and sit on its commissions.

This development is transforming the market, making it more transparent and more respectful. It also creates new opportunities: cooperation between museums, long-term loans, training programmes.