Repatriation- Benin Spring 2020

The project is backed by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, which has provided $1.3 million in funding, and plans to open in 2022. So far 17 museums in Europe and Nigeria—including those with the largest collections of Benin artifacts, such as the British Museum and the Ethnological Museum of Berlin—have agreed to share their data. Ms. Plankensteiner says that negotiations are also under way with several North American museums, including Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, which has roughly 400 Benin artifacts in its collection. The Digital Benin project will afford African scholars a chance to work with their European counterparts to place the objects—including plaques, busts and figurines—in their original cultural context. A project team in Benin City, where the looting took place, will record and document knowledge about the Kingdom of Benin’s history—oral traditions, songs, ceremonies and interviews with bronze casters, who continue to ply their trade using the same methods as their ancestors. “What are usually referred to as works of art were not intended to be in the modern sense of the term,” says Kokunre Eghafona, a professor of anthropology at the University of Benin in Nigeria, who is helping to coordinate the project. “Their original purpose was to record important events in the absence of writing or photography.” Of particular interest to Ms. Eghafona are the 900 or so looted brass plaques with figures in relief, dating back as far as the 15th century. They were made to celebrate battles won by the kingdom’s rulers, known as Obas. “These plaques served as mnemonics to aid the recollection of events or the persons present in them,” Ms. Eghafona says. When the German anthropologist Felix von Luschan published his compendium “The Antiquities of Benin” in 1919, he hailed the plaques as on a par with the work of famed Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. “The proficiency of some of the early plaques is really impressive because they are so detailed and full of information, which is amazing considering the technique,” Ms. Plankensteiner says. “You can also see the same attention to detail in the commemorative brass or bronze heads of former Obas, which were commissioned by their eldest sons as altar pieces.” When the works came to Europe in 1897, prejudiced European scholars were skeptical about their African origin. The British Museum curator Charles Hercules Read wrote that “at the first sight of these remarkable works of art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find and puzzled to account for so highly developed an art among a race so entirely barbarous.” After Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, successive Nigerian governments have sought the restitution of these and other looted works of art, to no avail. Ms. Plankensteiner, who is in favor of restitution, says that Digital Benin “might be helpful for our Nigerian colleagues to have a better idea of what is where and what they’re interested in having returned.” The database will also serve as a valuable reference tool for the creation of a new museum in Benin City, which is scheduled to open in 2023. The Benin Royal Museum will stand next to the palace that once housed many of the bronzes. The new museum will initially work on a rotating loan basis, exhibiting Benin artifacts that several European museums have agreed to lend. “Digital Benin is an important step and may bring an increased drive toward restitution of the artworks,” Ms. Eghafona says. “These objects are our cultural heritage, they are necessary for reference to our past—technologically, scientifically, politically, economically, socially, culturally and otherwise.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-virtual-homecoming-for-lost-treasures-11589565236