Thousands of Benin Bronzes are scattered in
museums worldwide after being looted by
Britain in the late 19th century.
A bronze sculpture of a West African king
that was in the collection of a Rhode
Island museum for more than 70 years is
among 31 culturally precious objects that
have been returned to the Nigerian
government.
The sculpture, called the Head of a King,
or Oba, which was held at the Rhode
Island School of Design Museum (RISD)
was among the objects transferred to the
Nigerian National Collections during a
ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, DC on Tuesday.
The Benin Bronzes were stolen in 1897
when British colonial forces ransacked
and looted the kingdom of Benin, which is
now in modern-day Nigeria.
“In 1897 the ‘Head of an Oba’ was stolen
from the Royal Palace of Oba
Ovonranwmen,” RISD Museum Interim
Director Sarah Ganz Blythe said in a
statement.
“The RISD Museum has worked with the
Nigerian National Commission for
Museums and Monuments to repatriate
this sculpture to the people of Nigeria
where it belongs,” Blythe said.
The pieces that were stolen in the late 19th
century included 29 that the Smithsonian
Institution’s Board of Regents voted in
June to return to Nigeria and one object
from the National Gallery of Art, officials
said.
“Today, we address a historic injustice by
returning the Benin Bronzes, magnificent
examples of Benin’s culture and
history,” Lonnie Bunch III, founding
director of the Smithsonian National
Museum of African American History and
Culture, wrote on Twitter.
“Through this repatriation, we
acknowledge a legacy of cultural theft and
do our part to return African culture to
Africans.”
The Head of a King, which is believed to
date to the 1700s, was given to the RISD
Museum by Lucy Truman Aldrich in 1939.
It had been acquired in a 1935 sale of
objects from the Benin Kingdom from the
Knoedler Gallery in New York, the
museum said in a statement.
A French customs stamp on the interior
suggests it had been held in a French
collection.
The RISD Museum said the sculpture is
almost certainly one of the looted objects,
even though it has not been able to trace
the piece to a specific French or British
collection.
The bronze head represents an oba, or
king, of the Edo people of Benin, West
Africa. The sculptures were commissioned
by an incoming king to honour a
predecessor and were placed on ancestral
altars in the royal palace, the museum
said.
The repatriation is part of a worldwide
movement by cultural institutions to
return artefacts stolen during colonial
wars.
In August, Germany signed an agreement
to transfer ownership of the Benin
Bronzes in its museums to Nigeria. The
collection was described as the most
extensive transfer of museum artefacts
from a colonial context to date and covers
512 objects which ended up in Berlin in
the aftermath of the 1897 looting.
The same month, the Horniman Museum
and Gardens in London announced it
would transfer a collection of 72 Benin
Bronzes to the Nigerian government.
Abba Isa Tijani, director-general of
Nigeria’s National Commission for
Museums and Monuments, said she hoped
the latest transfer would inspire other
museums to return African artefacts.
“We hope for great collaborations with
these museums and institutions and we
have already opened promising
discussions with them concerning this,” he
said in a statement.
“The entire world is welcome to join in
this new way of doing things. A way free
from rancours and misgivings. A way
filled with mutual respect.”


Source: https://www.aljazeera.com:443/news/2022/10/12/us-returns-african-bronzes-stolen-by-british-colonial-forces
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