PARIS, Oct 17 — Preventing the trade in trafficked cultural artifacts is a matter of concern not only to museums, but also to organisations such as Unesco and Interpol.

The two agencies are working together to create a virtual museum that will raise public awareness of the need to take action against the fraudulent import, export and transfer of cultural goods.

The project was officially launched in June, but Unesco recently held a meeting with its member states to give them a first glimpse of this virtual museum.

Its design has been entrusted to Francis Diébédo Kéré, a Burkinabé-German architect who won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2022.

"For this project, we needed an architect capable of rewriting the traditional playbook, who could design spaces while thinking outside the box, who could intimately link the material with the immaterial,” Unesco director general, Audrey Azoulay, told Artnet News.

Francis Diébédo Kéré’s 3D plans recall the shape of a baobab tree. Like this tropical tree, this virtual museum of lost artifacts will unfold along a spiral ramp.

The latter will be contained within a globe, linking the various continents and cultures to the 600 cultural objects that currently make up the collection of this museum like no other.

Unlike other cultural institutions around the world, the Unesco-Interpol virtual museum does not aspire to enrich its collection.

On the contrary, it hopes that the collection will diminish over the years, demonstrating the positive results of efforts made by museums, governments and international bodies to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural works.

The scale of this clandestine trade is difficult to assess, as existing statistics on the trade are incomplete. Despite this, the authorities estimate that it ranks third among international criminal activities, after drugs and arms.

Hence the importance of raising public awareness of this global underground trade.

Future visitors to this virtual museum will be able to browse a succession of digital galleries containing detailed 3D images of the stolen artifacts, selected by Unesco from the Interpol database.

They will be accompanied by documents explaining their cultural and historical significance, including testimonials from the local communities from whom they were taken.

For the time being, Unesco has not revealed the list of items that will be featured in its future virtual museum.

This visual platform should see the light of day at the end of 2025 and is scheduled to cost some US$2.5 million (RM11.8 million). Initial funding is being provided by Saudi Arabia, reports Artnet News.

However, additional funds are needed to design the final version of this virtual museum, which will enable users to navigate it in augmented reality. — ETX Studio