Restitution row: how Nigeria’s new home for the Benin bronzes ended up with clay replicas | Benin

In one corner of the new Museum of West African Art, visitors can marvel at an exemplary display of cultural treasures that once adorned the royal palace that stood in its place: a proud rooster, a plaque with three mighty warriors, a bust of a king with a magnificent beaded collar.

The works, collectively known as the Benin bronzes, were looted by British colonial forces, who set fire to the palace in a punitive expedition in 1897. In the following decades these were dispersed into collections in Europe and America.

Their return and public display at the $25m (£19m) state-of-the-art museum in Benin city, Nigeria’s Edo state, co-financed by European governments and western companies, was to be the crowning glory of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa’s stolen art.

But when MOWAA opens its doors on November 11, the only Benin bronzes on display will be clay replicas; Very different from the “most comprehensive exhibition”. [of Benin bronzes] It was touted by officials as “in the world” when plans were announced for the museum to become their home in 2020.

Approximately 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria in the last five years; Some of these are on the initiative of private collections, and some are by state decision of Germany and the Netherlands. None of them are currently publicly available.

If the looting of the original bronzes took place in the context of the so-called “scramble for Africa,” in which European nations competed to claim overseas territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, compensation resembled a struggle in part in reverse. Western actors sought to outbid each other to atone for their past, before authorities in Nigeria resolved old rivalries over what exactly compensation entailed.

“There was a race in the West to see who would be the first to give compensation,” said Phillip Ihenacho, director and president of MOWAA, without naming individual museums or governments. “And there wasn’t enough focus on who to return them to.

“I think there was a well-intentioned effort focused on being seen as a pioneer in this field. But a lot of people in the west didn’t understand the complexities within these countries.”

Nigerian demands for the return of the Benin bronzes, first expressed in the 1930s, were largely rejected by western governments and institutions until 2007, when a consortium of European museums and Nigerian officials formed the Benin Dialogue group.

On the Nigerian side, the group included not only representatives of the federal Nigerian government, but also representatives of Edo state, where the kingdom of Benin was once located, and Ewuare II, known as the Oba of Benin, a descendant of the royal family that once held bronze medals.

Which of these three parties was awarded the bronze medal on their return has historically been a matter of debate. The Oba argued that since they were looted from the palace, they should be returned to their descendants and not to Edo state.

European participants in the discussions had the impression that the dispute on the Nigerian side had been resolved.

comeback race

The band in November 2019 invited Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye making plans for a new museum where the returned treasures could be stored and displayed to the public. Yet, to the disappointment of authorities in Nigeria and activists in Europe, there has been no concrete statement regarding physical returns.

Spring 2021 would provide a sudden change of pace. The director of the newly opened Humboldt Forum in Berlin told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in an interview in March that the museum was considering leaving empty the symbolic areas where it planned to display the Benin bronzes in its collection and returning the originals to Nigeria.

This comment surprised German government officials, who were in West Africa to discuss repatriation with their Nigerian counterparts, and led to high expectations among the public and other organizations.

A flurry of activity followed: days later, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland announced that a looted bronze medal would also be returned. Similar statements were later made by the Horniman Museum in London, Cambridge University, New York Met and the Rhode Island School of Design art museum.

Museum officials argue that the pace of these developments has also been fueled by Nigeria’s cultural heritage agency, whose representatives fly around the world to negotiate repatriation agreements.

In December 2022, a German state delegation traveled to Nigeria with 21 bronzes packed in crates in the belly of the government plane; This initiative was encouraged by the then foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, from the German Green Party, who wanted to mark her first year in office. “It could and should have been a lot less hectic,” said one official directly involved in preparing the trip.

At the handover ceremony in Abuja, Baerbock said Germany was proud to have co-financed MOWAA to the tune of €6.8 million (£6 million) and “invited” his counterpart to display the bronze sculptures there. It was a big, touching moment, but beneath the surface, tensions that Europeans thought had calmed were surging again. Ministers of the federal Nigerian government and representatives of Edo state were present at the ceremony, but the Oba was not present.

This hostility had a personal flavor: Godwin Obaseki, then governor of Edo state, was a direct descendant of the family. Former palace official elected prime minister of Benin He was captured by the British after the punitive expedition and is still viewed in some circles as a traitor to the crown. Media outlets loyal to the palace accused Obaseki of establishing MOWAA to hijack the extradition process and requested a license to use it will be canceled.

The bronze medal challenge ended abruptly on March 23, 2023, when the Nigerian federal government made an official statement. newspaper He said the Oba of Benin was the rightful owner and custodian of the stolen treasures and that the treasures should be kept at his residence in Benin City unless the royal family decided otherwise.

The move provoked howls of outrage among Europeans who were initially skeptical of the reparations. Centre-right German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described it as a “fiasco” and suggested that the bronzes would be locked in the Oba’s private residence, off-limits to public access.

This is unlikely to be the case: a former cultural center adjacent to the Oba’s residence is said to be earmarked as a future museum. “The new name will be Benin Royal Museum and this is where they plan to store the bronzes,” said Benin-born Mercy Imiegha, director of the Lagos-based Nomadic Art Gallery.

In any event, disputes between Nigerians should not distract from the urgent need for the return of the bronzes, compensation advocates say. “If British forces had not invaded the Kingdom of Benin and plundered the royal palace, the Benin bronzes in German museums would never have reached Europe,” said Barbara Plankensteiner, director of the Hamburg Museum am Rothenbaum and co-spokesperson of the Benin Dialogue group. “We are looking at the largest theft of royal treasure in history. It was a moral imperative that they be returned to Africa without any conditions.”

Andreas Goergen, former secretary general of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Culture and Media, said: “Dealing with the artworks of traditional rulers is difficult for any republic. It took Germany 100 years to reach an agreement with the Hohenzollerns.” [the German imperial dynasty that was overthrown at the end of the first world war]. It took Nigeria four people to reach an agreement with the Oba of Benin. So there’s no point in being arrogant.”

“Europeans cannot tell us what we should or should not do with the objects of our heritage,” said Toyin Akinosho, co-founder of the Related Arts Committee, a nonprofit that organizes the Lagos Book and Arts festival. “Can’t we have discussions here about the programming of new cultural venues?”

Meanwhile, MOWAA had to readjust. Originally supposed to be called the Edo Museum of West African Art, the museum decided to remove the name of the state to emphasize its neutrality.

“We hoped that we could provide support for restitution efforts by demonstrating that we have institutions in West Africa that the West would recognize as world-class display and storage facilities,” Ihenacho said. “But we were never designed to be Benin’s pre-eminent bronze museum.”

£3 million will be funded towards an exhibition on archaeological excavations at the MOWAA site, with support from the British Museum in London, where one of the sites currently houses the world’s largest collection of looted Benin bronzes.

A selection of approximately 100 works will give clues about the story of the Benin kingdom and its dissolution. “Some of them may have been made of bronze,” Ihenacho said. “But there will be nothing involved in the extradition process.”