Elizibeth Marlowe reviews The Brutish Museum for the International Journal of Cultural Property:
Dan Hicks’s new book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, has made a splash. Designated by the New York Times as one of the best art books of 2020, featured on blogs, podcasts, webinars, and in mainstream newspapers, the book and its author, the professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and curator at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, are suddenly everywhere. This Zoom-enabled ubiquity can be understood in the context of the larger historical reckonings of 2020 and 2021 – a global pandemic fueled by global capitalism, climate change, and incompetent governance; a breaking point in the long saga of police brutality against racial minorities and white indifference to it; a toppling of statues to colonialist and Confederate leaders around the world; and, as I was finishing the book, a final attempt to impeach a hate-mongering US president for fomenting rebellion against the very democratic institutions he swore to serve. In its passionately argued call for the restitution of cultural artifacts looted in one of the most notoriously brutal episodes of colonial violence, The Brutish Museums encapsulates the zeitgeist.
The University of Aberdeen has joined other forward-thinking institutions such as the Humboldt Forum museum in Berlin and announced that it will return a Benin bronze to the Nigerian government. In a statement the University announced the return because of its “extremely immoral” acquisition, and called on other Museums in the United Kingdom to conduct their own inquiry and follow their lead. I could not be more proud of my former University and I hope this move will continue to push other institutions holding on to their colonial treasures to pursue justice for these objects and the creator cultures which desire their return.
Benin’s cultural patrimony was looted by British forces in 1897 during a violent dispute in which a British delegation was attacked, and then a large Punitive Expedition was assembled and exiled the leader of benin Oba Ovonramwen. The British destroyed Benin City and took back to Britain bronze sculptures, brass plaques, and sculptures created with the lost wax process. The Kingdom of Benin as I understand had been a capable and vibrant trading partner with Europe for hundreds of years, but in the 19th Century drive to colonize Africa, the culture and independence of the Kingdom of Benin was an inconvenience for the British empire and so was eradicated and impoverished.
This return continues a rich history of repatriation by the University. Neil Curtis, who head’s Aberdeen University’s museums and special collections said in a statement:
The University of Aberdeen has previously agreed to repatriate sacred items and ancestral remains to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has a procedure that considers requests in consultation with claimants. An ongoing review of the collections identified the Head of an Oba as having been acquired in a way that we now consider to have been extremely immoral, so we took a proactive approach to identify the appropriate people to discuss what to do.
The University museum has a small but lovely collection, and its location, the former Marischal College in central Aberdeen is being renovated, so there were not large numbers of visitors that will be disappointed in not being able to see this object on display. But that should not diminish the just result here. This head will be returned and viewed in context at a new cultural complex in Benin City which will be designed by David Adjaye.
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.”
