While some German museums return part of Benin's bronzes, the majority are still in Western museums, despite increasingly insistent requests for rendering.
After years of pressure, Germany has announced last April that she was going to return hundreds of priceless art objects looted in colonial times and exhibited in her museums to Nigeria.
Commonly called "Benin bronzes", these artefacts had become a symbol of debates on the return of looted works. Why did it take so long? Will other countries follow this example? And what will become of the bronzes from now on? Professor Jürgen Zimmerer, specialist in German colonial history known for his involvement in the debate around looted works, explains why (almost) everything remains to be done.
What are Benin bronzes and why are they so important?
The bronzes from Benin - or rather the objects from Benin, because they are not all made of metal; some are made of ivory or wood - are objects from the Kingdom of Benin, located in present-day Nigeria. Thousands of them were looted during the 1897 invasion of the kingdom by the British Empire, in part to pay the costs of the military expedition.
Auctioned in London and elsewhere, they quickly became central pieces of the collections of many museums in northern countries. Due to their great artistic value, they changed the way Europeans viewed African art, this rendering obsolete the old racist stereotype inherited from the colonial era that there was never art in Africa. but only craftsmanship. Nevertheless, the Europeans, and later the United States, had no qualms about keeping the booty.
Why are they talking about them today?
Nigeria and other African states claim their restitution almost since they were stolen. They have therefore never been totally forgotten, even if the subject has only rarely been discussed in the international press. Today, while interest in the question of colonial plunder is on the rise, attention is also shifting to them. The tipping point was the announcement made by Emmanuel Macron in Ouagadougou in 2017, explaining that he was going to return the colonial spoils of French museums and order a report on this topic to Felwine Sarr, Senegalese scholar and writer, and to Bénédicte Savoy, French art historian: a revolution on the scale of the debate.
The approach to opening the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, one of the largest museums in the world, also sparked discussions. This museum would house the collections of the old ethnological museums of Berlin, and more than 200 bronzes from Benin were to be exhibited there. However, activists and academics have singled out the problem of colonial looting, which resulted in the partial suspension of the project, in particular due to the interest of the international press. Open to the public since the end of July 2021, the museum currently contains a room filled with cartels and displays originally planned, but void of any work.
In Germany, this controversy took place at the same time as other controversies about the first genocide of the XNUMXth century.e century, committed by the former colonial empire against the indigenous peoples of Herero and Nama in what was then the German South West Africa, now Namibia, which had already brought up the issue of colonialism and its consequences in the public debate.
How did Germany manage this restitution?
Very bad. Initially, those responsible for cultural policy and many museums were not at all aware of the "problem" of colonial spoils.
When the controversy started to swell, they played down the criticism, ridiculed their critics, then attacked and defamed them. The worst episode so far occurred when the art historian Horst Bredekamp (one of the first founding directors of the Humboldt Forum) accused postcolonial critics of being anti-Semitic. All this with the aim of protecting the collections and the Western “tradition of knowledge”, accused - in a justified way in my opinion - of having ignored the racist elements of their history.
It was only after the pressure from German civil society and the international press that the government and museums have conceded that some - the official release speaks of a "substantial number" - bronzes from Benin were to be returned.
Where are the rest of the bronzes?
They are distributed throughout the northern hemisphere. Even if Germany were to return all Beninese objects in Berlin, this would amount to little more than 10% of what was looted.
It is certain that other museums will follow, or even play the leading roles in restitutions, such as the museums of Stuttgart or Cologne. However, other major museums outside of Germany are slow to act. Colonialism was a European project, as was the looting of works of art. The whole of Europe, all the countries of the North, are therefore involved and must tackle this problem. Many Benin bronzes can be found in the United States, for example.
The most important collection, numbering nearly 800 objects, is in the British Museum in London, which, apparently with government support, is in no rush to make any restitution.
This position is linked to a wider debate on the responsibility of colonialism as a crime against humanity. In the countries of the North, we are now ready to admit that colonialism gave rise to acts of violence, but we must understand that colonialism in itself was (and is) violence.
What will happen after they arrive in Nigeria?
A West African art museum is under construction in Benin City, in the state of Edo (southern Nigeria), and should host bronzes from Benin. However, the way in which the restored works of art are distributed between Nigeria as a nation state, Edo state as a federal entity and King Oba - as heir to the former kingdom and representative of the people of Edo - still does the subject of discussion.
In any case, this does not concern Europeans. It is up to the rightful owners to decide what to do with their works of art, and this should not delay the return.
The translation into the French version was provided by the site Justice Info.
Jurgen Zimmererteacher University of Hamburg
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