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Moroccan Parliament’s Missing Art: Hassan II’s Gifts Vanish Before Major Exhibition
Sunday 6 December 2020, by
Three works that Hassan II had offered to the Moroccan Parliament seem to have disappeared. This is the finding made during the organization of the exhibition dedicated to the painter Fouad Bellamine at the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMVI) in Rabat.
Fouad Bellamine, 70, exhibited about a hundred of his works on November 20 at the Mohammed VI Museum, coming from international museums and private collections. While this exhibition called "Entrée en matière" was a success, there were three works by the artist that were not present at this exhibition. These are the works offered by the late King Hassan II to the Moroccan Parliament in the 1980s.
"I would have liked them to be present during this retrospective," regrets the artist. [...] "It’s sad. It is only three decades later that I discover that three of my works, which I thought were still in Parliament, are no longer there." Where have these works of art gone? No response from the current President of the House of Representatives, Habib El Malki, or his predecessors. In his Memoirs, Abdelhay Bennis, the oldest civil servant in Parliament, confirms the disappearance of these works from the legislative institution at the time of the construction of the House of Councilors.
"We cannot say for the moment that the works of Fouad Bellamine have disappeared," says Abdelaziz Idrissi, director of the Mohammed VI Museum, to Jeune Afrique. According to him, several works acquired by Hassan II and offered to Parliament in the same context have been found in other places and other collections. But "the mystery still remains on this matter," he is convinced. The official admits that the museum did not "dig deeper," since it was "mobilized to borrow the works of the artist represented in several collections of international museums and private collections."
The only paradox: Parliament had committed to preventing this kind of situation by equipping itself with a legal framework. A framework agreement had indeed been signed between Mr. El Malki and Mohamed Laâraj, then Minister of Culture, in February 2019, with the aim of protecting "works of visual art at the disposal of the House of Representatives and preserving its components and quality."