The Saga of the Benin Bronzes Takes a Farcical New Turn
Museum professionals are heading to Benin in Nigeria for the inauguration on November 4th of MOWAA, the city’s new Museum of West African Art. Built largely of rammed earth, and with no collection to put in it, the museum in Nigeria’s capital of kidnapping is the curious outcome of a well-meant project.
The Benin Dialogue Group (BDG) was founded in 2007 to address demands for repatriation of brass and ivory artefacts removed when an 1897 British expedition deposed the murderous, slave-selling regime of Oba Ovonramwen of Benin.
Nigerian officials and curators of world museums which hold collections of ‘Benin bronzes’ then discussed for years what might be done. Nigeria, after all, was gifted excellent collections at independence in 1960: but its state museums are unvisited and decrepit, and have been looted by locals. No-one knows exactly what remains of the collections so carefully assembled by British curators.
If the BDG’s member museums did lend or donate to Nigeria from their collections, where could such treasures safely go? Clearly not to the country’s existing museums. Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo state (whose centre is Benin City) had the solution: EMOWAA, an independent museum – the Edo Museum of West African Art – to house loan exhibitions from Western museums, and perhaps eventually pieces gifted by them.
The British Museum kickstarted the project with over £3 million for archaeological investigation of the site (which has come up with little of significance – basically, rubbish-tip gleanings and the foundations of mud walls). €4.5 million came from Germany. More money was provided for British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye OM OBE to design a palatial museum. Running costs, once a museum was erected, seem not to have been considered.
Then the wheels wobbled. 2023’s annual BDG meeting collapsed into farce, the EMOWAA project becoming unworkable. Today’s Benin Oba (a private citizen) has never had any interest in museums, displaying his ancestors’ bronzes to the Nigerian people or receiving pieces on loan – he just wants to own them. Nigeria’s outgoing President helped him out here, decreeing in March 2023 that all bronzes restituted by foreign museums were to be gifted to the Oba – which has been happening – and other pieces so returned have never been seen by the people either.
The BDG held no annual meeting in 2024, and Adjaye is dogged by allegations of sexual assault (which he denies); his other work has largely melted away. The German combine Siemens AG has extensive oil and gas interests in Nigeria, and the Siemens Foundation paid for the BDG-organised online catalogue of Benin treasures, Digital Benin – almost entirely those in the world’s museums, with a smattering of ones gifted by Britain in 1960, and nothing at all from the Oba’s hidden hoard.
So the outcome of these years of delegations flying to meetings and expressing “goodwill, co-operation, new paradigms” and so forth is a considerably smaller “museum” made of mud and mainly displaying current Nigerian art, which may or may not house historic artefacts one day: and an online shopping list (Digital Benin) for Nigerians who will go on demanding artworks which have been kept safe, displayed and studied in foreign museums for over a century – and where the descendants of the slaves Benin sold can visit them too.
Often it’s simply a clash of expectations. Recently, German curators visiting Nigeria asked for a meeting with the Oba to discuss their bronzes: sure, His Royal Majesty’s court replied – and the museum professionals would need to provide “plenty” of alcohol and a large cash honorarium. Not seeing how they’d be able to expense these demands, they sent their regrets.
The mud MOWAA has flashy branding and logos by London design agencies, and also big skylights, which is probably just as well: with the nation’s endless power outages, no-one in Nigeria expects the lights to stay on for long. How the new museum’s other ambitions – research and conservation, and the digital resources that it promises – will be pursued without electricity has not been explained.
It’ll be interesting to see how next week’s junketing in Benin is reported. Security for the foreign dignitaries is bound to be massive; Nigeria’s Government advises against driving to Benin due to carjacking and kidnappings, flying is preferable. And the Oba will presumably boycott the event, as he does others where he is not simply gifted more of his ancestors’ blood-soaked trophies to squirrel away.
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This is the latest update on Tommy Robinson. ADMIN POST – TOMMY UPDATE Tommy want’s to thank everyone who has sent him money for prison spends, also for money towards his legal representation, he is incredibly grateful for your support. He is currently still in the safe segregated unit of Belmarsh which has been used to hold the likes of child murderer Ian Huntley, Jihadi hate preacher Abu Hamza, and more recently ‘Joe Outlaw’. Tommy will be putting in an application today requesting to speak to the governor to talk about his safety and his rights as a civil prisoner. Tommy has made it clear that he will refuse to be sent down ‘the block’, meaning, if he does get moved it will be on a wing where he will almost certainly have to fight for his life. He also wanted everyone to know that prisoners in Belmarsh are getting a 60% reduction in their sentences due to overcrowding, however he will get no such deduction for a ‘civil’ offence. Southport child murderer Axel Rudakubana the man who was in possession of an al Qaeda manual and who manufactured the poson ricin is currently residing in Belmarsh prison. He is… Read more »
Is there a Tommy fund?
Yes:
http://www.givesendgo.com/save-tommy
You’re welcome. 😉
I don’t want another penny of public money or energy to be spent on any of this crap. Call FedEx and tell them to ship it all back to wherever it came from.
A textbook case of what happens when woke ideology makes contact with reality.
But, as far as I’m concerned, they can have their bronze statutes back.
I agree with you.
the museum in Nigeria’s capital of kidnapping is the curious outcome of a well-meant project.
It’s not really well-meant, though. It’s the product of the alliance of the white saviour class – the group that thinks that Africans need saving from themselves – and the white anti-white class that thinks whites are world poisoners, and who seek to destroy one of the greatest treasures of our civilisation: its museums.
“It’s the product of the alliance of the white saviour class – the group that thinks that Africans need saving from themselves – and the white anti-white class that thinks whites are world poisoners”
They are pretty much one and the same. Self-flagellating and head patting are the de rigueur attributes of the chattering classes.
A powerful, shocking article by Mike Wells. It shows how the mindsets of Ethnic Africans has not really changed at all over the centuries, regardless of where they are living on the planet, and regardless of how much money they have received from the West. It’s the same for Ethnic Indian Subcontinentals, who carry their obsession with their own racist caste system with them everywhere, though carefully trying to hide it. In India they still commit ritual human sacrifices of their children to the demonic beings they worship. It’s the same for Pakistanis still incestuously marrying their own cousins. It’s the same for Ethnic Orientals, for better or worse, the Chinese still living under a rebranded imperial dynasty called “Communism”, and city-folk still looking down with contempt upon farmers, the city mothers threatening suicide if their child falls in love with a farmer. It’s the same for Muslims everywhere, still secretly dreaming of the Global Caliphate. Only the South Americans have changed, no longer rounding up tens of thousands of their own youth in the prime of life, binding them on sacrificial altars and cutting out their beating hearts. The Ethnic Oriental migrants to North America have also changed, after… Read more »
Meanwhile Reeves has dropped this. Not sure what to make of it. Mostly lies from first glance.
https://order-order.com/2024/10/30/live-reeves-delivers-budget/
Nigeria.
That sums it up nicely! Being a Nosy Parker, I wondered how many official wives he has, not including any concubines. Here are some photos of the current Oba of Benin and his five official wives:
Meet Oba of Benin’s Wives and Children
I wonder what that starfish kind of symbol on the headdresses of all his wives means?
You can just tell the Guardian reading is strong amongst the white-folx in the photos above.
‘Clash of expectations’ is putting it politely, twas ever thus. Any excuse for them to prick the West’s conscience. What they want is our lifestyle for minimum effort (viz ‘copious alcohol’). Give them the bronzes/artifacts and make it clear there will be no more delegations, no more assistance to build a museum nobody visits and leave them to it.
I’m sure this “museum” has gone to great lengths to explain how the treasures they aim to display were created ….. with the manacles they used on the slaves they captured to sell to western nations …. and how they killed many others in the process of capturing them.
I’m sure they’ve included a section on the reparations they’ve paid to the descendants of those slaves and the thousands they killed whilst acquiring them.