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The work is one of thousands taken by British forces during the 1897 attack. Mounted ruler (so-called Horseman) from the 16th century. And while the MFA declined to estimate the collection’s overall value, individual Bronzes can fetch millions even as their sale stirs outrage: Just two years before Lehman’s promised gift, Sotheby’s withdrew an ivory mask estimated at $7 million after the Nigerians denounced the sale. Lehman, who declined an interview request through a museum spokesperson, assembled his collection over the course of decades, often purchasing from dealers. “At some point, humanity has to prevail.” “When you ask questions, they tell you, ‘Oh, you can come see it in our museum, we have kept it well,’” said Victor Ehikhamenor, an artist who has long advocated the Bronzes’ return. Precious few of the Bronzes, however, are in Nigeria.
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Today, Hicks estimates that more than 160 institutions possess items from the raid, including American museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Chicago’s Field Museum, and Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
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Many more were dispersed around the world. Some of the works were sold by dealers others were retained by expedition members as spoils of war. The British Museum now has more than 900 objects, including many plaques that once ornamented the palace. Some of the choicest works, including a pair of ivory leopards, went to Queen Victoria. One museum curator hailed them as a “new ‘Codex Africanus,’ not written on fragile papyrus but in ivory and imperishable brass” his European counterpart compared them favorably to the work of renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. In London, their beauty and technical bravura were recognized almost instantly. An attack party ambushed Phillips’s group, killing seven British officials including Phillips along with an estimated 200 or more African carriers. “At the same time, we certainly don’t think we should encourage the return of the objects to the donor.”įor centuries, the kingdom of Benin - not to be confused with the country of Benin, which borders Nigeria - was a major power in West Africa, where it derived a portion of its wealth from European trade in pepper, palm oil, and, at one point, enslaved people.īut by January 1897, tensions were high when a trade dispute prompted James Phillips, an official with England’s Niger Coast Protectorate, to defy the wishes of the oba, or king, and travel as an envoy to Benin City. “It’s not the right time to start bringing things into the collection,” said Teitelbaum. The donor, banking scion Robert Owen Lehman, owns the other 27, which he plans to transfer to the museum in the coming years.Īfter the Globe began asking questions about the collection, the museum shifted course, saying it was temporarily “pausing converting promised gifts to outright gifts.” “This is a conversation for Boston.”Īs a measure of the MFA’s evolving response, the museum told the Globe in July it planned to move forward and accept the promised gift: To date, the museum owns five of the 32 Bronzes on display in its dedicated Benin Kingdom Gallery. “The question for American institutions is: How many times does a stolen African object have to change hands between Europeans and Americans until it’s no longer stolen?” said Hicks, who is also a curator at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum. “There’s reparations happening at the government level,” he said, noting some European governments were involved “in acts of looting themselves.” “American institutions have acquired their Benin collections in transactions in the marketplace.”īut that doesn’t change how the Bronzes left Africa to begin with, said Dan Hicks, a professor of contemporary archeology at the University of Oxford. Museums in the United States have been slower to respond, though that may be changing: Earlier this month, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art removed its Bronzes from display, saying it plans to return them to Nigeria.Įuropean museums have moved more quickly in part because they are state-run, said MFA director Matthew Teitelbaum. The debate has intensified in recent months with a number of European museums moving to return the objects amid intensifying calls for restitution. Today, the MFA finds itself at a crossroads as Bronzes around the world have become a central focus in the ongoing struggle over artifacts looted during that colonial era.