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The Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC has removed it Benin Bronze According to the museum’s director, Nagier Blankenburg, the royal palace is planning to display artifacts looted by the British in the raid in 1897.
“I can confirm that we have removed the Benin Bronze that we displayed and we are fully committed to the repatriation,” Blankenburg said. “We cannot build the future without doing our best to heal the wounds of the past.”
Earlier this year 21 objects from the Kingdom of Benin were on display at the museum. Its online database lists 38 items from Benin in the collection. About half have been traced back to the British punitive expedition to Benin in 1897, including numerous plaques, monumental heads and figures. Origin research on other items is still ongoing.
Benin objects are in the collections of more than 160 museums around the world. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
After the plundering of 1897, artifacts from the Royal Palace of Benin were sold and scattered around the world; The objects from Benin are now held by more than 160 international museums, many of which are in the US. Fowler Museum of the University of California has also said It plans to hold talks with Nigerian authorities over the future of 18 items in its collection from the Kingdom of Benin.
Last week, two British universities looted artefacts returned To Nigeria: The University of Aberdeen handed over the “Oba,” or bronze head of the king, and Jesus College Cambridge returned a bronze statue of a cockerel.
In mid-October, Germany and Nigeria signed a memorandum Understanding to set a timetable for the return of approximately 1,100 Benin sculptures from German museums, with the first repatriation envisaged in the second quarter of 2022.
In June, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that he will send the three items back to Nigeria. Two works, a pair of 16th-century Benin court brass plaques of a “warrior chief” and a “junior court officer”, were donated to the museum in 1991 by modern art dealer Claus Perls and his wife Dolly, while the third , a 14th-century “If Head” was recently offered to the museum for purchase by another collector.
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