Looted art homeward bound
Amid the Elgin Marbles wrangle, the Horniman Museum in London plans to hand back 72 artefacts it has held for more than a century.
Over 18 days in February 1897, more than 5000 British troops armed with machineguns poured into Benin City, the capital of a kingdom now in southern Nigeria, leaving a trail of destruction and looting thousands of sacred, priceless artefacts.
Many of these objects ended up in 150 museums and galleries all over the world. More than a century later this episode, one of the darkest in British colonial history, continues to cast a shadow as cultural institutions wrestle with the legacies of empire.
Now one of the country’s leading museums has announced it will return its haul of “Benin bronzes”, as momentum builds for a reappraisal of the artefacts held in Britain. The Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, southeast London, is to return ownership of 72 objects that have been in its collection for more than 120 years to Nigeria amid signs that ministers are softening their position on repatriation.
The unanimous decision by the Horniman’s board of trustees is a watershed moment: it is the first museum funded by the British government to say it will return its haul from Benin, which is now in Edo state, Nigeria.
Nick Merriman, the Horniman’s chief executive, said the museum’s collection, which includes 15 brass plaques, a brass cockerel altar piece, ivory and brass body ornaments, will be transferred to Nigerian ownership after a request from the African country’s government in January.
The move by the Horniman, which recently won the Art Fund museum of the year prize partly for its “Reset Agenda” that examined its colonial origins in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, may cause the trickle of repatriations to become a flood and raises questions about the fate of other contested objects, such as the Elgin Marbles held at the British Museum.
There are hundreds of Benin bronzes, ivories and other treasures scattered around 43 museums, galleries and collections, according to Dan Hicks, curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and author of The Brutish Museums.
There are more than 900 objects from the Kingdom of Benin in the British Museum alone, of which just over 100 can be seen in its galleries. A bronze head of an oba, a king, is on display at Windsor Castle.
Germany agreed to transfer 1000 bronzes to Nigerian ownership last month, and last year France returned some of the bronzes looted by French soldiers in their 1892 raid of what is now Benin. In 2017 President Macron said restitution of African cultural objects was a “top priority”.
Just two bronzes have been returned from Britain so far, however: from Jesus College, Cambridge and Aberdeen University. Oxford and Cambridge Universities said last week that they would return more than 200 between them.
Merriman, 62, said that the museum spent the past six months commissioning independent experts to study the bronzes’ provenance, running workshops for schoolchildren and canvassing opinion from the museum’s members as well as the local Nigerian diaspora.
“Quite a few of [the schoolchildren] wrote to us. They all felt, in the way that small children are very clear about morals, they should be returned,” he said.
The 1897 punitive expedition was launched weeks after the “massacre” of nine British officials amid a trade dispute with the oba, Ovonramwen. Historians now dispute the idea that the raid was meant to avenge the envoys, but instead suggest that the killings proved a useful pretext to make a long-planned incursion into a wealthy territory that resisted falling into the British sphere of influence.
The UK Foreign Office auctioned the “official” loot to cover the cost of the expedition. Much more was “unofficial”. Frederick Horniman, a tea trader and Liberal MP who opened his museum in 1901, bought what are thought to be the first treasures that came up for sale in Britain. He spent £30 (about $4600 today) on 12 items in the month after the raid, and continued to acquire objects until 1899.
Merriman has wrestled with displaying 29 of the objects. “We have had examples of people from Nigerian descent who are quite upset, and we’ve had to train our front-of-house staff to talk to people about the objects,” he said. “On the other hand, the largest diaspora group in our local community is Nigerian. There’s always been a case that it’s a good thing for the Nigerian community, and our visitors generally, to have an example of this major west African civilisation on display.”
Many opponents of restitution say that if objects are returned to their nation of origin then it will lead to swathes of repatriations all over the world and leave western museums empty. “The floodgates argument is often made, but it’s really not the case,” Merriman said. “Agreeing to the Benin bronzes doesn’t mean that every claim for every Victorian and Edwardian object in museums will be agreed.”
Merriman said that it has one other outstanding claim, for a native Canadian wooden mask. Although the Horniman’s bronzes will soon return to African ownership. Merriman is planning to ask to loan some of the items back.
The Horniman’s decision comes as British ministers show signs of softening their approach to contested heritage and the spoils of empire. Lord Parkinson, the arts minister, said that it was not for government to “tell the museums what the right or wrong decision is” and that any restitution claims should be made “case by case, item by item”.
Parkinson added: “It’s bad history if a nation sweeps things under the carpet and forgets them. It’s also bad history if you create new myths of wickedness and sins of the past. We have to confront the facts and learn lessons from them.”
Last week, Arts Council England published new guidance on how to respond to claims for restitution. It said museums should consider “the right thing to do” and be transparent. Tristram Hunt, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and a former Labour MP, has called for government to be stripped of its power to block national museums from returning objects.
“Saying that they’re here because they’re here isn’t correct,” said Merriman. “The point about objects is that their history changes. So there can be another chapter of these objects’ history.”
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