Germany Is Returning The Benin Bronzes: Should The UK follow in Their Footsteps?
The Benin Bronzes are artefacts from Benin City, now part of Nigeria. Calling them artefacts is often an oversimplification. The Benin Bronzes are a collection of material culture from Benin City that hold spiritual and ancestral significance for the people of Benin. Many of these Bronzes would have been used in religious practice.
For the Edo people of Benin, the Benin Bronzes are narrative vessels – not solely artefacts, as incorrectly labelled by Western institutions. Enoti Ogbebor, founder of Nosona Studios and Benin-based artist, said “They were created to tell stories, to hold memories and to pass these stories and memories from one generation to the next.” In many ways, the Benin Bronzes are the vessels through which the ancestors of the Edo tribe are remembered.
Germany recently announced their commitment to returning all state-owned Benin Bronzes to Nigeria in 2022. As of June 30th, 2021, The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (which oversees the collections of museums in Berlin) said that the Benin Bronzes would be returned to Nigeria regardless of the circumstances by which they were acquired. What this means is, whether Benin Bronzes were acquired through the art market or not, Germany is preparing a full-scale return of these precious items. This commitment has intensified the conversation in the UK regarding the Benin Bronzes held in this country, with many urging the UK to return the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. This call for the return of the Benin Bronzes is known as restitution.
The Benin Bronzes were plundered from Benin City in February 1897 in an act of British colonial violence. The Benin Punitive Expedition ransacked Benin City and set the palace alight. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office looted the Benin Bronzes as spoils of war, selling them off to private collectors and museums to cover the cost of the punitive expedition. That is how many of these Bronzes have ended up across Europe, America, and in British institutions. Calls for repatriation of the Benin Bronzes recognise that the Benin Bronzes were originally brought to Britain in an act of barbaric theft, and from Britain were displaced across the world. It is important to recognise that the theft of artefacts was as essential a tool of colonialism as the exploitation of natural resources and human lives that shaped the British Empire.
Those who are against repatriation of the Benin Bronzes claim that museums, such as the British Museum (which houses over 900 Benin Bronzes), are better placed than cultural institutions in Nigeria to hold them. Many who argue this do so under the assumption that Nigerian cultural institutions do not have the appropriate infrastructure to preserve their own artefacts. Dan Hicks, curator at the Pitts River Museum in Oxford and author of The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence, and Cultural Restitution said: “[The Benin Bronzes] have been equally unsafe in the hands of the British, not least because of the attack in 1897, which destroyed much of the royal and sacred landscape… The most important of the collections have been sold off in the west.”
In my opinion, keeping Benin Bronzes displaced in museums and private collections across the UK and elsewhere in Europe prolongs the original colonial violence of their looting. In February 2020 I went to the British Museum to view the Benin Bronzes. Ultimately, I was disappointed. The text that accompanied the Bronzes felt lacking in information; the violent colonisation and looting of Benin City that brought the Benin Bronzes to the British Museum had been diluted. I heard other visitors mocking the features of the characters depicted – characters who are most likely royal ancestors of the Edo tribe. Whilst museums have no authority over how visitors engage with the artefacts held within them, witnessing visitors poring through the artefacts to mock stereotypically African features felt reminiscent to Europeans buying tickets to zoos to ogle at Black people in cages. It is also worthwhile to question the ability of a British cultural institution to accurately reflect the narrative behind the Benin Bronzes when they do not recognise the significance of the Benin Bronzes as mediums for telling the spiritual and ancestral narratives of the Edo tribe. Museums sometimes act as one of the final standing pillars of colonisation.
Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments set up the Legacy Restoration Trust in preparation for the return of their looted artefacts. British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye has designed the Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) with plans for the new cultural museum to open in Benin City in 2025. This museum will house the Benin Bronzes returned to Nigeria and will have the appropriate infrastructure for restoring and maintaining artefacts.
Benin City have been calling for the return of their artefacts for decades. There are believed to be thousands of Benin Bronzes displaced worldwide, yet Benin City houses maybe up to 300 of their own cultural artefacts. In 1977 FESTAC (Second Festival of Black Arts and Culture) was held in Lagos, Nigeria, and showcased art, music, culture, and literature from African artists across the diaspora. The participants of the festival used the event to devise strategies of cultural empowerment. They saw a need to protect Black culture from being destroyed by other cultures, and to bring an end to Black culture being primarily seen through the context of primitive museum artefacts. When the curators of the event asked the British Museum for a 16th century ivory mask of the Iyoba (Queen Mother, Oba/King’s mother) to use as the centrepiece of FESTAC, they were told that the artefact was too fragile to travel. This incident brings to light how the violence of colonisation continues across time, dispossessing colonised countries – like Nigeria – of artefacts that are rightfully their own.
The British government’s stance on the Benin Bronzes, as of March 2021, has been that institutions should “retain and explain” controversial artefacts. Oliver Dowden, culture secretary, urged museums to “defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down.” Clearly, some regional institutions disagree. Whilst the British Museum has the largest collection of Benin Bronzes in the UK, it is prevented from permanently returning artefacts by the British Museum Act 1963 and the Heritage Act 1983. The University of Aberdeen decided to repatriate a bust of the Oba (a King in Benin City), concluding that they had no moral title to retain an artefact brought to Britain as loot. Currently, over 45 cultural institutions across the UK hold Benin Bronzes within their collections. It is my hope that they follow Germany and the University of Aberdeen in returning them.
To learn more about the Benin Bronzes, Benin Culture, the Punitive Expedition, and Cultural Restitution:
City of 201 Gods: ilé-ifè in time, space, and the imagination – Jacob K. Olupona
Iyoba, The Queen Mother of Benin: Images and Ambiguity in Gender and Sex Roles in Court Art – Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan
The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution – Dan Hicks
‘The Dialects of Definitions: ‘Massacre’ and ‘Sack’ in the History of the Punitive Expedition’ in African Arts, Vol. 30, No. 3, Special Issue: The Benin Centenary, Part 1 (Summer 1987): 34 – 35 – Ekpo Eyo
Journey of an African Colony – Olasupo Shashore (Netflix docuseries)
The Lost Treasures of Ancient Benin – Michael A. Nkanta and Emmanuel Nnakenyi Arenze
Benin: Royal Arts of a West African Kingdom – Kathleen Bickford Berzock
Royal Art of Benin: the Perls Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art – Kate Ezrea
‘One Museum’s Complicated Attempt to Repatriate a “Benin Bronze”’ via www.hyperallergic.com – Laura Raicovich
‘The Historical Life of Objects: African Art History and the Problem of Discursive Obsolescence’ in African Arts, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Winter 2005): 62 – 69; 94 - 95 – Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
Benin under British Administration: the impact of colonial rule on an African Kingdom, 1897 – 1938 – Philip Aigbona Igbafe
‘The man who returned his grandfather’s looted art’ via BBC – Ellen Otzen
An Evaluation of the Principles of Primogeniture and Inheritance Laws Among the Benin People of Nigeria – Ernest Osas Ugiagbe, Kokunre Abontaen-Eghafona, and Tracy Beauty Evbayiro Omorogiuwa
Written by Adwoa Owusu-Barnieh
Adwoa is a 22-year-old ex-Greater-Londoner, currently calling Birmingham home. She studied Classical Literature & Civilisation at the University of Birmingham. Adwoa is perpetually preoccupied with the limitations of language and knowledge when it comes to understanding the human condition and – ironically – commits a lot of time and language to expressing her knowledge (or lack thereof) of these things. Her aim is to curate space for more intentional modes of living, ritual, and understanding. .
