Art and/or Ethnographica? The Reception of Benin Works from 1897–1935 (original) (raw)

Displaying Loot. The Benin objects and the British Museum

Displaying Loot. The Benin Objects and the British Museum This study deals with the objects, now in the British Museum, that were looted from Benin City, present-day Nigeria, in 1897. It looks at how the museum represents the Benin objects, the Edo/African, the British/Westerner, and the British Museum. According to the museum, the Benin objects provide the “key argument” against the return of objects in its collections. The study pays particular attention to how the museum’s representations relate to its retentionist argument. The museum maintains that it was founded to foster tolerance, dissent, and respect for difference, and that it today shows many different cultures without privileging any of them. The museum’s benevolent impact is exemplified by the Benin objects whose arrival in the West has led to the shattering of European derogatory stereotypes of Africans, thanks to British Museum scholars. The study examines these claims and finds that they rest on flimsy or no evidence. The museum misrepresents and glorifies its own past and exaggerates its own contribution to Benin scholarship and the European view of Africans. The museum has shown cultures, not as equal, but as placed in a hierarchy, and in the early 20th century its scholars gave scientific legitimization to the stock stereotypes of Africans, such as the likening of Blacks to apes. The analysis of the museum’s contemporary exhibition and accompanying publications show that the museum – still – represents self and other as different: the Edo/African is portrayed as traditional while the Westerner is portrayed as progressive. The study concludes that, despite the museum’s claim to universality, its representations are deeply enmeshed in, and shaped by, British (museum) traditions and cultural assumptions. Paradoxically, while the statement of objectivity and impartiality is central to the museum’s defense against claims, it seems that the ownership issue strongly contributes to the biases in its representations. Keywords: Benin, Benin bronzes, Benin objects, Britain, British Museum, colonialism, cultural property, Edo, heritage, loot, museums, museum studies, Nigeria, racism, repatriation, representation, restitution, war booty, Westernness.

Internationalisation of Benin Art Works

2014

The artworks of Benin are all about events and achievements, actual or mythical that occurred in the past. These art works was grounded on traditional values and religious beliefs, which also displayed iconographic affinities. Until 15 th century A.D, Benin art items were not known outside the ancient Benin kingdom and commanded very little monetary and aesthetic values. The internationalisation of Benin artworks first occurred by accident, because the Europeans that made it possible, were not aware of the art items before coming to the continent. The coming of the Portuguese in 1472 was the first of such event then the Benin artworks were used as exchange for Portuguese goods. The second was the looting of Benin art items, by the British soldiers, in 1897, in what was tagged Benin Punitive Expedition. Other aspects of internationalisation include the display of Benin art items at various museums across the world Benin artworks uploaded in the internet and artefacts on display at va...

The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Review.

Public Archaeology, 2021

Hicks, Dan. 2020. The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press. The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks is both an intellectual and theoretical engagement with an academic discipline, and a work of public activism and consequential intent. It is the latter that has underwritten the books success and popularity, picking up on the long-term campaign to return material heritage and precious belongings taken under colonial-era duress, at a time when the urgency of this long-term campaign has been reenergised. In this review, I wish to explore what the theorisation of this intent does, and has the potential to undo. The intellectual encasing of consequence has a very real power. It enables the production of moral and intellectual capital from the envelopment of the historical harm associated with collections in a cocoon of theory and self-declared allyship. As so eloquently put by Azoulay, "the pursuit of the new defines imperialism" (2019: 18). A defining feature of the last 30 years of Museum Anthropology is the pursuit of a new ethics; a newness branded through metaphorical vocabularies that enclose the same vital questions about repair, relevance, return, and ongoing harm within theoretical frameworks. I do not wish to judge the moral integrity of this work, or the genuine desire to build an intellectual scaffolding onto which we might pin a different kind of practice, and imagine a better, more humane, future for our museums. What I would like to think through however are the limits of theory as groundwork for engaging the terrain of individual, institutional, and legal responsibility and change that are required to bring about the transformation that is necessary within our institutions. A change that has never transpired-yet has repeatedly provided discussion points in conference papers, journal articles, books, twitter feeds and lectures-is for the processing of requests for the return of material heritage taken under duress to become a normal, everyday part of museum work. I spend a lot of time trying to understand why this has been so difficult, and what my professional responsibilities as an academic and museum practitioner are in order to get to where we need to be. Hicks' The Brutish Museums is anchored on the idea that academic activism has a role to play in not only driving this change, but leading it. The author self-declares this book as part of a wave of public activism in 2020, catalysing the return of looted property from Africa held in Europe's World Cultures museums. "The answers lie" Hicks concludes, "in the hands of those who, after reading this book, will put it down, stand up from their chair, walk out the door, and take action to make the 2020s a decade of restitution" (2020: 242). It is in these terms that I have chosen to frame this review; in what this book has the potential to enable, over and above its integrity as an intellectual project. Hicks rightly points out how the many of the present generation of curators and museum decision makers were introduced to repatriation as a matter of debate; as an ethical, practical and intellectual question, something to think with before acting on. This highlights how it is within academic or other professional spaces, and not personal experience or communal memory, that many of those who now manage collections first engage in a sustained way with questions about the futures of collections: through MA programs, traineeships or collections-based PhD research. Hicks focuses on two strands of this theoretical training.

First Word: African Art in the Marketplace

african arts, 2011

The Fifteenth Triennial Symposium of African Art brought members of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association to African Arts' headquarters at the University of California, Los Angeles. The campus accommodated an amalgamation of scholars, museum and gallery professionals, and artists. The Triennial boasted 46 panels with 210 presentations, and welcomed 35 colleagues from the African continent. The symposiums multiplicity served as a fitting gift for the events hostess, a city that proudly hangs diversity and dynamism in the storefronts and billboards that act as metaphorical walls for those of us who call Los Angeles home. MUSEUM DAY A notable 240 people participated in the Museum Program preceding the offical Triennial, more than double the attendance for the same event at the previous Triennial in Gainesville.1 Such turnout indicates a commitment to the study of collection and display practices that has remained strong in the field for many decades. Contributing to the robust scholarship related to these topics, several presentations gave new and revised histories of collections. For example, Risham Majeed and Kathryn Wysocki complicated the standard narrative that objects collected from Africa entered European markets as "primitive" artifacts that were eventually elevated to art status according to a linear trajectory. Wysocki explained that in Germany art museums were reducing their holdings and ethnographic museums were expanding theirs-and incorporating objects from Benin into ethnographic museums was seen as a form of rescue from the less-prestigious genre of the art and craft museum. Wysocki's insights contribute to Annie Coombes s pioneering study of the Benin bronzes, but also suggests that England's suppression of the bronzes art status was due to a specific imperial relationship between England and Benin that is not translatable to the whole of Europe.

REPATRIATION EFFORTS OF BENIN ARTWORKS

It has obviously been a long battle, so long beneath the surface. Of popular knowledge among Nigerians, yet also unknown by many. The irony of it... Here are contributions of some modern Nigeria artists to raise the awareness of the repatriation and restitution question.