The Edo Museum of West African Art
Two years ago, we said in this column that museum curators in the wealthy West should not just give back cultural material regarded as having been looted in the past, but also work with their counterparts in the recipient museums to share skills in conservation and access (CWA 93). The British Museum (BM) has now announced such a scheme: a collaboration between the BM and Nigerian partners to create a new Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City. In addition, there will be a joint British and Nigerian archaeological project to explore the history of the Kingdom of Benin and the former capital, world famous for its copper-alloy plaques and sculptures.
It is astonishing to learn how little is known about the palace culture that produced these great works of art, the oldest of which dates from the 12th century, while most were produced in the 15th and 16th centuries. But acquiring knowledge was perhaps not uppermost in the minds of the British forces who attacked Benin City in 1897. Military leaders at the time described this as a ‘punitive expedition’ in reprisal for the killing by Edo warriors of the 220-plus members of a consular expedition to Benin earlier that year.
The punishment was out of all proportion to the perceived crime – it led to the destruction of the palace complex, described by a Dutch visitor in 1688 as being ‘as large as the town of Haarlem and entirely surrounded by a special wall, like that which encircles the town. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses, and apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long square galleries… resting on wooden pillars, from top to bottom covered with cast copper, on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles, and are
kept very clean.’
The privatisation of objects