The sculptor who looked for models in Moroccan prisons: the colonial past of Catalan museums

BarcelonaBetween April and May 1954, one of the most ambitious expeditions of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona, inaugurated in 1949, was organized in the protectorate of Morocco. The sculptor Eudald Serra, who was part of the expedition, wanted to model a nude bust, but local law and morality made it impossible to find any woman willing to pose. Serra did not give up; he simply looked where colonial power was absolute. With the collaboration of the Spanish authorities, he visited prisons, reformatories, and "public houses." The use of sex workers as models was systematic and deliberate in many campaigns, taking advantage of their extreme vulnerability in a context of colonial domination.

The memoirs of the then director of the Ethnological Museum, August Panyella, describe with admiration the work of Eudald Serra, who was particularly looking for models who did not have "mestizaje." Men were chosen, with the help of the Spanish authorities, in barracks or cells. Serra even modeled inside a prison in Tetouan, thanking the center's director for the facilities, and noted that some women were imprisoned for "illegitimate pregnancy." The nude bust, which is part of the collection of the Ethnological Museum, is one of the 3,397 pieces of colonial origin that the research project (Tr)african(t)s has identified in six Catalan museums: the Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures, the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, the Darder Museum of Banyoles, the Museum of Leather of Igualada, the Museum of Leather Art of Vic, and the Víctor Balaguer Library Museum of Vilanova i la Geltrú. There are items ranging from photographs to hunting traps and weapons, as well as musical instruments, funerary objects, tools, masks, and sculptures, mainly from former Spanish Guinea, Morocco, the Philippines, and the Sahara. The research team documents this in the book Spectres de la vitrina (Manifest), which aims to shake up the museum landscape.

"We have found a more favorable scenario for revision in Catalonia than in Madrid, where there is strong public resistance," says Andrés Antebi, who is part of the project. There are museums that are initiating processes related to this critical revision and others that are not part of this first part of the research, such as the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia, which want to collaborate. Unlike countries like France, the United Kingdom, and Belgium, the volume of pieces in Catalonia is lower and many were "acquired" rather than being the result of direct looting. Even so, as in many places in Europe, in Catalonia the accumulation was so excessive during the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century that many of these pieces have not even seen the light of day: they still rest in the same wooden boxes they arrived in. "The study questions the legitimacy of the process of forming the collections, as they were produced in a context of profound structural inequality," highlights Antebi.

The Claretian missionaries and the Fang women

One of the pieces studied are Filipino weapons that are part of the collection of the Victor Balaguer Museum in Vilanova i la Geltrú, and which were obtained by Spanish forces during combat. The Ethnological Museum, for its part, bought a ngombi harp, used in the bwiti religion, from a colonial administrator of Spanish Guinea. "It is probable, but not certain, that this administrator had confiscated it from followers of this belief, who were usually imprisoned by the Spanish authorities," assure the researchers. In the same way, some spectacular bracelets that Fang women used to wear on their arms and ankles, and which could not be removed without the help of a blacksmith, arrived in Catalan collections, through the Claretian missionaries. "Some of these bracelets had been extracted in public acts, presented as examples of the liberation of Fang women, even though they sometimes did not attend voluntarily but were forced by colonial agents," concludes the study.

Another example is a carving attributed to the workshop of the Fang master Ndutumu Singó. The piece ended up in the museum after passing through the hands of Miguel Núñez de Prado, governor of Spanish Guinea between 1925 and 1931. The trace of the object – finally bought by the Generalitat in 1936 from the governor's widow – perfectly illustrates how heritage circulated among colonial elites before filling public display cases.

The diagnosis of (Tr)african(t)s is clear: the gaze must be decolonized. The research denounces that many sacred objects are shown out of context, reinforcing the old idea of "civilization versus savagery". "The project's proposal aims to integrate the communities of origin into decision-making bodies and review documentation that is often deficient," says Antebi. Ultimately, the research challenges museums to stop being warehouses of a colonial past and to properly explain the origin of many of these pieces. "It aims to have a social impact through a book, a traveling exhibition, and a documentary," adds Antebi. The study also concludes that there is a certain reluctance to acknowledge the involvement of Spanish colonialism. "There is a resistance to recognizing this involvement, both from Spanish nationalism and from part of Catalan nationalism, which alleges that since Catalonia did not have its own state during the period when Spain colonized America, Africa, and the Pacific, there is no Catalan responsibility for these events", the report says.