One cause célèbre of the repatriation debate of recent years has been the Benin Bronzes. These artworks, created in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, are a collection of several thousand plaques that were in the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin. During the “Benin Expedition” of 1897, a raid on Benin City by British forces, the bronzes were seized. They made their way to collections in the UK, and a public auction in 1898 also put them in the hands of private collectors and public museums.
The institutions holding them are now under pressure to return the bronzes to the nation of Nigeria (Benin as an independent state no longer exists), which plans a new national museum to display them. Last year, the Smithsonian returned its collection of 29 Benin Bronzes, all obtained during the raid, under their new “Ethical Return Policy.” Cambridge University returned 100.
As David Frum (whose parents were collectors of African art) commented in The Atlantic last year, this situation also represents a paradox. For years the campaign was to get African art into Western museums (and out of ethnographic collections) so that it would be considered on the same level as fine art from other parts of the globe. But now, in less than a generation, there has been a shift to demand this art be moved out of those museums again.
Should museums only exhibit work of their own culture, rather than bringing the world to visitors?
In addition, what does it mean to “return” these items to Nigeria, a nation-state that did not exist at the time of their creation? Frum argued that “A standard that art should belong to the present-day government of the place where that art was created centuries ago is not, to me, sustainable.”
In the case of the bronzes, there is a rival claim. The current Oba (the descendant of the traditional King) believes they should go to him: after all, they were the property of his ancestor. However, he has today no constitutional role as a monarch, returning them to him is simply putting them in the collection of a wealthy private individual.
As it turns out, Frum’s concerns seem to have been well-placed, as the outgoing president of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari announced in March that returned bronzes would now go to Oba Ewuare II. According to the Times of London, the bronzes returned from Berlin with much fanfare have now “vanished” into the collection of the Oba.