Abstract
On February 9, 1897, British military personnel invaded and looted works of royal art created for over five centuries in Benin kingdom. Although these artworks constitute the canon of African art scholarship, their management in western cultural institutions deserves critical assessments. This chapter explores the question, how have colonizers used arts management and cultural policy to forcefully plunder and retain the cultural patrimony of the Benin people of southern Nigeria? I will analyze the history of Benin and how Nigerians developed artworks for social differentiation and control. The idea that underpins the importance of the Oba in the sphere of cultural production would form the fulcrum for the production of the artworks that have come to define the people and culture. Through the analysis of the fallout from the ongoing debate about the repatriation of African cultural patrimony, one can articulate the appreciation of Benin cultural property in the west.
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Notes
- 1.
Until this time, and after this time Benin art was not known in history to have been sent away in such huge number. The other time when we see the kingdom sending huge number of art objects in this modern era can be seen in the 2007 Benin exhibition organized by Plankensteiner at the Museum fur Vulkenhunde in Vienna Austria. It was reported that the reigning oba of Benin, Omo no ba ne do Uku Akpolo kpolo gave a significant number of art objects from his palace.
- 2.
Some scholars have alluded to the art objects as a codex that preserved the history of the kingdom.
- 3.
The British Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum are two institutions in Britain that have a significant number of Benin art objects in its collection.
- 4.
As we will see when these objects entered American museum, the culture of the people and the art objects were not subjected to such condescending statement.
- 5.
Another example of such negative analysis of the people and culture is seen in Fig. 3—take note of the description of the makeup of the kingdom, to fit with the title that read “The Benin Expedition ….”
- 6.
Coombes and other scholars such as Gunsch maintain that German institutions had funding that enabled them acquire as much Benin objects as they wanted at that time. Taking the activities of Felix Von Luschan as example, these scholars show how his aggressive purchases of Benin materials helped the museum at Berlin become one with the largest number of Benin art objects before the First World War.
- 7.
He in collaboration with a colleague in the museum in Berlin did, Luschan, Felix von, Walter de Gruyter & Co, and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Germany). 1919. Die altertümer von Benin. Leipzig; Berlin: Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger Walter de Gruyter & Co.
- 8.
Jeremy Coote of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford has pushed back this analysis, stating that, the museum also displayed its collection to indicate the various geographical regions they emanated from (Coote, 2015).
- 9.
The Quai Branly in Paris could have had similar experience as the Germans because the 1937 Benin exhibition at the Fogg Museum at Harvard relied on works from French collection and from the Quai Branly.
- 10.
Susan Vogel talks about how scholarship in African art in the 1960s fed off of the simmering racial tensions of the time and led Africanists to rekindle their effort in defense of the objects of their individual researches.
- 11.
This is by no means the earliest collection of African art in the U.S.
- 12.
Email communication.
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Ezeluomba, N.C. (2022). Cultural Patrimony and Discussion of the 1897 Invasion of Benin Kingdom: Some Questions for Arts Management. In: Cuyler, A.C. (eds) Arts Management, Cultural Policy, & the African Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85810-0_6
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