US museums return trove of looted treasures to Nigeria
The National Gallery of Art (NGA), the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum held a joint ceremony Tuesday in Washington, DC, to mark the return of 31 Benin bronzes from their respective collections to Nigeria, marking the latest milestone in a growing movement to return the looted treasures.
The repatriation ceremony took place behind closed doors at the NMAfA, where 13 Benin objects have featured in a farewell display for the past two weeks. Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) will now assume ownership of 29 artifacts that were deaccessioned earlier this year from the Smithsonian collections, including brass plaques, commemorative heads and figures.
The NGA has repatriated a sculpture of a cockerel following a vote held in 2020 by its board of trustees to deaccession the work. The sculpture, the only Benin bronze in the museum’s collection, was first acquired by a British merchant who worked in Nigeria and consigned the piece to Sotheby’s London in 1954.
The cockerel was one of up to 10,000 artifacts stolen by British troops from the royal palace in the Kingdom of Benin (in present-day Nigeria) in 1897.
The pieces were dispersed throughout the world and, in the decades that followed, several were acquired by or donated to US museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chicago’s Field Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and others.
The repatriated pieces from NMAfA and the NGA are joined by a bronze head of an “Oba” (king) from the RISD Museum, also deaccessioned in 2020. (The term “Benin bronzes” is a catch-all description encompassing objects in brass, ivory and wood as well as bronze.)
“This event opens a new vista regarding American cultural institutions’ relationship with Nigeria,” said Abba Isa Tijani, director general of the NCMM, according to an NGA press release.
He also hailed the move as “a harbinger of greater things to come as other museums and institutions here in the United States with collections of Benin bronzes are expected to follow suit.”
“By returning the artifacts, these institutions are together writing new pages in history,” said the Nigerian minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement.
He anticipated future collaborations between Nigerian and US museums, including joint exhibitions and educational exchanges. Under a new agreement, Nigeria will make nine Benin bronzes available to the NMAfA as loans, a Smithsonian spokesperson says.
The Smithsonian announced the decision to return most of its Benin bronzes in March, several months after the objects were removed from display at the NMAfA.
“We cannot build for the future without making our best effort at healing the wounds of the past,” the museum’s director Ngaire Blankenburg said last November.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES