One day, visitors slowly trickled into the Africa wing of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, a massive museum that opened in 2021 in a Neo-Baroque reconstruction of the former Royal City Palace. The setting was familiar: the artifacts were encased behind glass and mounted on white walls—an “ethnology exhibit” of priceless works of art from a faraway land.
But this exhibition was different. Dozens of Benin Bronzes, intricate sculptures and metal plaques dating back to the 13th century, were on display in Berlin for what might be the last time. Since July 2021, the artifacts no longer belong to Germany. They are part of a loot that the Country has begun to repatriate to Nigeria, starting in December with the return of 20 bronzes. The exhibition tells not only the story of the artifacts, but also that of their theft in 1897, when British forces looted Benin City and looted the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin in what is now southwestern Nigeria.
Diagrams explain how the bronzes were acquired from European traders, while photos show British soldiers striking triumphant poses over piles of loot.
The bronzes have been at the center of an international firestorm as calls grow for Western museums to take responsibility for how they obtained objects that were seized during the colonial era or looted by the Nazis and other invading forces.
For museum visitors, the ethical dimensions of viewing looted art have become impossible to ignore. What responsibility do we have for favoring institutions that display what critics say are stolen works? Should we ask how these museums got their treasures?
“There has been a big shift in consciousness in recent years,” said Gilbert Lupfer of the German Lost Art Foundation, a search database for Nazi-looted art. Most museum visitors, he said, realize that works with problematic provenance “can’t stay in the museum.”
European and American museums have long resisted calls for repatriation, arguing that the objects were obtained legally, that they are safer where they are and that the passage of time has made it impossible to determine the rightful owners.
But the balance has tipped.
“I think there has been a big change,” said Geoffrey Robertson, a British-Australian restitution expert and human rights lawyer. “It started in a way when President Macron said that indigenous art, much of which is in Western museums, should go back to Africa,” he said, referring to President Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 promise to return African belongings from France.
Now new projects, such as the Edo Museum of West African Art in Nigeria, which will house repatriated artworks from historic Benin, are reshaping conceptions of what a museum should be like.
The museum was conceived by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye as “a kind of abstraction of what Benin City would have looked like before.”
“When they understand how sophisticated, advanced and grand the Kingdom of Benin was relative to what was happening in Europe at the time, it can give people a sense of optimism for the future,” said Phillip Ihenacho, a Nigerian financier who runs a trust in charge of the project.
By: CHARLY WILDER
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6633486, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-03-28 18:40:06
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