Opinion
Repatriation is a Start, but True Healing for Benin Requires More
Equity should be discussed in the form of European and American institutions partnering with the Benin government to create sustainable museums.
Benin bronzes
News
In Ceremony, Met Museum Officially Returns Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
The museum and the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments entered into a shared agreement to collaborate on mutual loans of Benin objects and other “exchanges of expertise and art.”
News
Smithsonian Takes Benin Bronzes Off Display, Considers Repatriation
The National Museum of African Art identified 16 objects from its collection with direct links to the British army’s 1897 punitive raid on the Kingdom of Benin.
Opinion
Why the Elgin Marbles Should Not be Returned to Greece ... Yet
To do so before they have returned the Maqdala treasures and the Benin Bronzes and the Easter Island statues and the Maori heads, before a coherent set of precepts for decolonization has been articulated, would affirm the wrong principle.
News
Nigerian Artists Offer to Swap Work for British Museum’s Benin Bronzes
"We never stopped making the bronzes even after those ones were stolen," said a founding member of the Ahiamwen Guild. "I think we make them even better now."
Opinion
How the Labels in the British Museum's Africa Galleries Evade Responsibility
Despite the British Museum’s active participation in work towards restitution, the current display and captioning fail to be forthright or responsible.
News
The Met Will Repatriate Two Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
Critics note that the Met has failed to address the hundreds of other works from Benin that remain in its collection.
Opinion
How a New Nigerian Museum Can Help Repatriate the Benin Bronzes
Nigeria’s business leaders will have to give generously; politicians will have to put rivalries aside; and contemporary artists will have to embrace the project.
News
Germany Announces Plan to Return Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
The Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City is being considered as a future home for the returned artifacts.
News
Path Toward Restitution of Benin Bronzes Advances in Germany and UK
Thousands of objects were looted from present-day Nigeria by British troops in a punitive mission in 1897.
Interview
Dan Hicks on the Benin Bronzes and Ultraviolence of World Culture Museums
"The Brutish Museums" considers the histories of cruelty that western museums perpetuate when they do not endeavor to return looted colonial artifacts.
News
After Years of Repatriation Debates, France’s Benin Restitution Bill Approved
Meanwhile, a new report commissioned by the Dutch culture minister suggests the return of “any cultural objects looted in former Dutch colonies if the source country so requests.”