MR. DIAGNE She is someone who stands her ground, and that is the case for Felwine also. I spoke to them often as they were writing the report. They consulted widely. They traveled back and forth to Senegal, Mali, Cameroon. And they spoke with people in the president’s office, who gave them legal advice.

The biggest surprise, even shock, of the Savoy-Sarr report is that it explicitly says that only full restitution of works of art will be acceptable. Curators have dodged this debate before by pointing to France’s centuries-old “inalienability” law; national institutions do not have the right to deaccession anything in a public collection. Savoy and Sarr say: no, the law has to change, it is the only morally responsible thing to do.

MS. FROMONT That’s why the report is potentially so impactful. It demands that the logic of France’s relationship to Africa be renegotiated. It’s not simply about the objects, and where they are. By insisting on full restitution, the idea of “long-term loans” to African countries becomes as absurd as it sounds.

MS. OJIH ODUTOLA There has to be a principle that both African and European institutions agree with.

MR. DIAGNE When I had my first conversations with Felwine, he was telling me that many of his interlocutors — civil servants, functionaries, or museum people — would tell him, “You see, it is so complicated legally. We should really agree on the principle that these objects need to circulate.” The concept of circulation was being sold to him. And he said, yes, circulation makes sense. Somehow Africa has to share its art with the rest of the world. But Macron said “restitution,” and restitution has a meaning.

So the authors said, we will be sticking to that word. If there is going to be circulation, it should be Africa lending the objects, not the other way around.

MS. FROMONT Maybe in the future African countries will make long-term loans to Quai Branly!