Tag: Africa

European museums to hold Benin Bronze meeting

Benin Bronzes at the V&A Museum in London, via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benin_Bronzes.JPG

Ben Quinn’s piece in the Guardian sheds light on an interesting forthcoming conference which hopes to “establish a permanent display” of Benin material in Nigeria. The Benin bronzes are in many museums in the West, and viewing them gives me to very different reactions. On the one hand, they are terrific to look at, with wonderful detail. But on the other, many of these objects were seized by the British Empire during an 1897 Punitive Campaign. That campaign was as bad as it sounds. To give a brief overview, a British official and his advisors were sent to uncover whether there was ritual human sacrifice taking place in the Kingdom of Benin. When the official and his advisors were killed by the King of Benin, the British responded by destroying the city, and looting as many as 900 of the Benin bronzes to compensate for the costs of the exhibition. Many of these objects were purchased by museums.

Nigeria has requested the return of much of this material, but the museums and collectors who currently possess them have often refused to enter into a dialogue. These negotiations for the return of material can be difficult and contentious, but they do not have to be. Here is hoping the meeting, which will take place in the Netherlands’ National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden will lead to a productive dialogue in the same way that Yale’s return of material to Peru or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act operates.

Quinn’s story highlights the ethical case driving the dialogue, but also some of the challenges:

“I think that among this generation of curators there is an eagerness to find ways towards reconciliation,” said Dr Michael Barrett, senior curator at Stockholm’s Världskulturmuseet. “We are one of the smaller participants in this and it is very early but we are eager to continue with discussions.”

Among the issues still to be resolved are insurance costs and security arrangements. European curators and their west African counterparts are also keen to establish a legal framework that would guarantee the artefacts immunity from seizure in Nigeria.

John Picton, a professor at Soas University of London (formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies) and a former curator of the National Museum in Lagos, said: “The moral case is indisputable. Those antiquities were lifted from Benin City and you can argue that they ought to go back. On the other hand, the rival story is that it is part of world art history and you do not want to take away African antiquity from somewhere like the museums in Paris or London, because that leaves Africa without its proper record of antiquity.”

Ben Quinn, Western Museums Try to Forge Deal with West Africa to Return the Benin Bronzes, The Guardian, Aug. 0, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/cambridge-benin-bronzes-loan-deal [https://perma.cc/8YTH-FC4G].
Folarin Shyllon, One Hundred Years of Looting of Nigerian Art Treasures 1897-1966, 3 Art antiquity and law 253 (1998).

"Cultural Heritage and African Art" at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford

This Saturday January 21, from 9.30-4.30 the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University will present the Ruth K. Franklin Symposium on the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Our topic will be “Cultural Heritage and African Art: Negotiating the Rise of Ethical and Legal Collecting Concerns.” More details and background are available here.

 The speakers are:

  •  George Okello Abungu, Ph.D., founding director, Okello Abungu Heritage Consultants, Nairobi, Kenya 
  • Derek Fincham, J.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, South Texas College of Law, Houston 
  • Kate Fitz Gibbon, J.D., attorney, Kate Fitz Gibbon Law Office, Santa Fe, N.M. 
  • Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University 
  • John Henry Merryman, J.D., LL.M., professor of law emeritus and affiliated professor emeritus in the Department of Art, Stanford University 
  • Sylvester Okwunodo Ogbechie, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara
I hope to post a few thoughts on the conference early next week, and if you are in the Bay Area I hope you’ll consider attending.
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Africa, Repatriation, and Universal Museums

There have been some very interesting exchanges in recent days between Dr. Kwame Opoku and Phillipe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dr. Opoku wrote an interesting and provocative letter to museum directors entitled Is legality a viable concept for European and American museum directors.

I have been quite familiar with Dr. Opoku’s scholarly work for some time, and it’s refreshing to see him continue to use the internet to broadcast his arguments; especially as he is a powerful voice for African repatriations, which often receive short shrift when compared to similar arguments for the Mediterranean or Central and South America.

De Montebello responded to the open letter with the following:


I read with interest Dr. Kwame Opoku’s article EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN MUSEUM DIRECTORS AND THE LEGALITY CONCEPT? and glanced at the photo that accompanied it.

What a haunting, strange-looking object. There is no caption accompanying
the photograph so I looked in books and found that this was a product of
ancient Nigeria, the Nok culture. I also discovered that more than 2,000
years ago as well an Ife culture in Nigeria produced sculpture that I found
simply divine. As beautiful as anything produced at any time in the West.

Then I went to our African galleries and found — as must our audience of
some 4.5 million visitors a year — that Nigeria seemed to have produced no
art before the much later Benin period, well represented at the Metropolitan
Museum. Why is that? Simply because the Metropolitan Museum does not own
either a Nok or an Ife object. Their export and acquisition are strictly
forbidden, therefore the Metropolitan Museum has refrained from their
acquisition.

We have tried for years to convince the Nigerian authorities to place one
object from each of these great cultures on loan to the Metropolitan for the
benefit of our audiences, but unfortunately, to no avail.

Dr. Opoku believes all Nok, Ife, and Benin pieces outside of Nigeria should
be returned to Nigeria; that all works produced on its territory should
remain there.

How this advances broad knowledge of the rich cultural history of Nigeria is
a mystery to me.

He’s advancing a kind of internationalist perspective here. It strikes me as a bit unfair to say that if wrongfully acquired objects are returned, then all objects would have to be returned. However, some policies certainly do have as a consequence, the possibility of restricting the movement of objects. The difficulty here stems from his argument. He’s taking a grain of truth and extrapolating it to an almost illogical extreme. This happens all the time in policy and political debates, not just with respect to cultural heritage. Unfortunately much of the international law-making apparatus on the international level is incapable of successfully bridging these kinds of differences of opinions. As a result, partisans tend to push toward the margins rather than forge workable compromise.

Dr. Opoku responded with a letter which he forwarded to me, and probably others, including the Museum Security Network.

If the Metropolitan Museum has not been able to convince the Government of Nigeria to loan one object of each of the great cultures of Nigeria, there must be some reason which must have been explained by the Nigerian authorities. One cannot comment on this point without first studying the relevant correspondence.

The statement that “Dr. Opoku believes all Nok, Ife, and Benin pieces outside of Nigeria should be returned to Nigeria; that all works produced on its territory should remain there“ is surely incorrect and the maker of the statement knows it. As a person of culture who has spent a considerable part of my life visiting various museums all over the world, I reject very strongly this statement. It is an attempt to attribute to me an extreme position which can be easily dismissed instead of dealing with the serious arguments presented in detail (some would even say too much detail) in my various articles which are freely available on the internet.

Finally, Tom Flynn noted these exchanges and provided the following pointed analysis:

The problem here is the nature of the dialogue, which is not really a dialogue at all, but a series of embittered volleys that merely consolidates the entrenched positions of both parties. Dr Opoku continues to write uncompromising attacks on museum directors. One can understand his growing impatience, given the unwillingness of most museum directors to address what are clearly very serious issues passionately articulated. Moreover, when he does get a response, as was the case here, he is treated with the sort of patrician disdain that has become the lingua franca of leading museum directors across Europe and North America.

I regret I’m pressed for time today and don’t have time to dive into the substance of these arguments, however all these links are highly recommended.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Catching Up

Noteworthy items from the last week:

  • A former employee of the State Museum in Trenton New Jersey was charged with stealing a rare atlas worth $60,000.
  • Charles McGrath of the NYT speculates about who will succeed Philippe de Montebello at the Met.
  • Shaila Dewan, also of the NYT looks at the interesting litigation surrounding the Gees Bend quilters in Alabama.
  • Black College Wire looks at the possibility of the return of more vigango to Africa.
  • Tom Flynn of ArtKnows looks at the growing market for Aboriginal art.
  • Another instance of theft of public art, this time in Wisconsin.
  • Bucky Katt of Get Fuzzy “found” a new Monet.
Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Vigango from Kenya


Robin Pogrebin has an interesting article in today’s New York Times on a decision to return 9 wooden grave objects to Kenya. A ceremony at the UN yesterday marked the decision. They had been purchased by Lewis and Jay allen and were on display in their Park Avenue apartment. Their daughter decided to return them to Kenya after learning of their significance to Kenyans. It took her four months to arrange for their return. That seems to be an underconsidered problem with many source nations: they need to make it easy for individuals to repatriate artifacts to ensure they aren’t subject to criminal liability and that there are places to hold the objects.

It seems the statues are used to decorate graves, and often become part of ongoing ceremonies, discussions and celebrations. It would be as if someone took the headstone from your grandmother’s grave and displayed it in their living room. The clear implication is that all vigango are stolen in one form or another. They are valued by collectors in the US, Europe and Japan because they are beautiful works of african art, but they may not know they were meant as grave decoration. This strongly indicates all exported vigango were stolen.

But some US museums have them in their collection, and are loathe to return them. The ethical and legal grounds for their return is very strong, the only thing missing from a repatriation would seem to be an initiative by the African source nations.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com