Few pieces better represent the failure of institutions to return looted artworks than the Benin Bronzes.
An umbrella term for a group of sculptures and metal plaques that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin in what is now southwestern Nigeria, the Benin Bronzes were created from the 13th century onwards by Edo artists and were stolen by British troops in 1897.
Since then, they have dispersed around the world. Today, the majority of the artworks are in state-owned museums around Europe.
The British Museum alone has more than 700 objects from the historic kingdom in its collection. The Ethnological Museum of Berlin has the second largest collection of Benin Bronzes with more than 500 pieces.
There have been several calls for western museums to return the Benin Bronzes, as well as other stolen artworks to their rightful homes. A few of the looted pieces have been returned. Most recently, the University of Aberdeen and Cambridge University's Jesus College returned two pieces to Nigerian High Commission last month. However, according to Nigerian artist Chika Okeke-Agulu, a vast majority of museums, particularly those who hold most of the Benin Bronzes, "have found very creative ways of avoiding these calls".
“They have enacted laws when they are owned by states, or they have established non-written forms of behaviours if they are privately owned institutions answerable to wealthy people and boards of trustees,” Okeke-Agulu said during a panel on Restitution and Repatriation of Looted Artworks and Artefacts at the March Meeting in Sharjah, which is centred on issues of post-colonialism.
When you do discussions with schoolchildren, which we had done, there is no memory of what Benin was, and Benin literally is Rome or Athens in Africa
David Adjaye,
architect
Among these avoidance tactics, he said, was the “retain and explain” approach, which strives to alleviate the ethical and political tension of owning these works by being transparent about how they were acquired.
“There’s an exhibition ongoing right now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called The African Origin of Civilisation: Myth or Reality,” said Okeke-Agulu, who is also director of the programme in African Studies at Princeton University.
“It’s a truly exceptional exhibition. Powerfully installed with incredible works of art made by artists from the African continent,” he said.
One of the exhibition’s main achievements, he said, is pairing works from Pharaonic Egypt with those from other parts of Africa. A step towards eradicating a long-standing prejudice that distinguished Egyptian art as a higher form than those from the rest of the continent.
Out of 21 African artworks displayed alongside ancient Egyptian pieces, Okeke-Agulu said, five were Benin Bronzes. The works contain sculptures depicting animal and human figures, fragments and relief works. The New York museum, he said, like a few others, is trying to inform viewers of how the works came to be in the West, and be forthcoming about the story of the looting of these objects and the fact that there have been calls for them to be returned.
“What it does not say is what they are going to do about that,” Okeke-Agulu said.
“It also tells you, as does the British Museum on the other side of the Atlantic, that they are doing a lot to help build a museum in Benin [City], that they have been participating in the Benin dialogue group in digital projects, in the possibility of loaning the works to the museum being built in Benin,” he said. “It says nothing about the call for repatriation or restitution.”
Okeke-Agulu also said the British Museum Act of 1963, which was put in place to prevent the museum to dispose its holdings except in special, pre-designated circumstances.
It is this legislation, Okeke-Agulu explained, that prevents the museum from deaccessioning looted artworks in its collection, including the Benin Bronzes. The act, he pointed out, was enforced a mere three years after the Year of Africa, when 17 African nations gained independence from French, British and Belgian colonial forces.
“It's not unlikely that that Act was enacted to prevent these decolonising nations from knocking on their doors,” he said.
During the talk, Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, the designer behind the new Benin museum in Nigeria — and Abu Dhabi's Abrahamic Family House — said the looting of the Benin Bronzes were one aspect of the erasure of a city with a cultural history that spanned 1,000 years.
“It’s one of the most heart-wrenching things to be able to go to a city with so much history and to hold fragments as a way to try to stitch back the incredible power of that place,” he said.
Adjaye said there was a systematic discussion by British colonial forces to destroy the palaces, to destroy the spaces in which the Benin Bronzes were, to decontextualise the objects in order that they can be “reassembled and reimagined in new forms as colonial tropes of war".
“It was really the basis by which we started to understand what our job was going to be in this project,” Adjaye said.
“These objects were sacred shrine objects mostly, or palace objects or objects of governance and history which had a direct relationship to architecture, and the way in which architecture and art curates culture.”
The British destruction of Benin, he said, is erasure that destroyed the collective memory of the community of what their own city was like.
“What is inherited is a kind of post-war blockwork modernist city, which is counter to everything to do with the way in which, for a thousand years, their civilisation had lived. When you do discussions with schoolchildren, which we had done, there is no memory of what Benin was, and Benin literally is Rome or Athens in Africa.”
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4,872 matches
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76 nations
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The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
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Three-day coronation
Royal purification
The entire coronation ceremony extends over three days from May 4-6, but Saturday is the one to watch. At the time of 10:09am the royal purification ceremony begins. Wearing a white robe, the king will enter a pavilion at the Grand Palace, where he will be doused in sacred water from five rivers and four ponds in Thailand. In the distant past water was collected from specific rivers in India, reflecting the influential blend of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology on the coronation. Hindu Brahmins and the country's most senior Buddhist monks will be present. Coronation practices can be traced back thousands of years to ancient India.
The crown
Not long after royal purification rites, the king proceeds to the Baisal Daksin Throne Hall where he receives sacred water from eight directions. Symbolically that means he has received legitimacy from all directions of the kingdom. He ascends the Bhadrapitha Throne, where in regal robes he sits under a Nine-Tiered Umbrella of State. Brahmins will hand the monarch the royal regalia, including a wooden sceptre inlaid with gold, a precious stone-encrusted sword believed to have been found in a lake in northern Cambodia, slippers, and a whisk made from yak's hair.
The Great Crown of Victory is the centrepiece. Tiered, gold and weighing 7.3 kilograms, it has a diamond from India at the top. Vajiralongkorn will personally place the crown on his own head and then issues his first royal command.
The audience
On Saturday afternoon, the newly-crowned king is set to grant a "grand audience" to members of the royal family, the privy council, the cabinet and senior officials. Two hours later the king will visit the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the most sacred space in Thailand, which on normal days is thronged with tourists. He then symbolically moves into the Royal Residence.
The procession
The main element of Sunday's ceremonies, streets across Bangkok's historic heart have been blocked off in preparation for this moment. The king will sit on a royal palanquin carried by soldiers dressed in colourful traditional garb. A 21-gun salute will start the procession. Some 200,000 people are expected to line the seven-kilometre route around the city.
Meet the people
On the last day of the ceremony Rama X will appear on the balcony of Suddhaisavarya Prasad Hall in the Grand Palace at 4:30pm "to receive the good wishes of the people". An hour later, diplomats will be given an audience at the Grand Palace. This is the only time during the ceremony that representatives of foreign governments will greet the king.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Results
Stage Two:
1. Mark Cavendish (GBR) QuickStep-AlphaVinyl 04:20:45
2. Jasper Philipsen (BEL) Alpecin-Fenix
3. Pascal Ackermann (GER) UAE Team Emirates
4. Olav Kooij (NED) Jumbo-Visma
5. Arnaud Demare (FRA) Groupama-FDJ
General Classification:
1. Jasper Philipsen (BEL) Alpecin-Fenix 09:03:03
2. Dmitry Strakhov (RUS) Gazprom-Rusvelo 00:00:04
3. Mark Cavendish (GBR) QuickStep-AlphaVinyl 00:00:06
4. Sam Bennett (IRL) Bora-Hansgrohe 00:00:10
5. Pascal Ackermann (GER) UAE Team Emirates 00:00:12
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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Brief scores:
Toss: Pakhtunkhwa Zalmi, chose to field
Environment Agency: 193-3 (20 ov)
Ikhlaq 76 not out, Khaliya 58, Ahsan 55
Pakhtunkhwa Zalmi: 194-2 (18.3 ov)
Afridi 95 not out, Sajid 55, Rizwan 36 not out
Result: Pakhtunkhwa won by 8 wickets
Race card
6.30pm: Al Maktoum Challenge Round-3 Group 1 (PA) US$100,000 (Dirt) 2,000m
7.05pm: Meydan Classic Listed (TB) $175,000 (Turf) 1,600m
7.40pm: Handicap (TB) $135,000 (T) 2,000m
8.15pm: Handicap (TB) $135,000 (D) 1,600m
8.50pm: Nad Al Sheba Trophy Group 2 (TB) $300,000 (T) 2,810m
9.25pm: Curlin Stakes Listed (TB) $175,000 (D) 2,000m
10pm: Handicap (TB) $135,000 (T) 2,000m
10.35pm: Handicap (TB) $175,000 (T) 1,400m
The National selections
6.30pm: Shahm, 7.05pm: Well Of Wisdom, 7.40pm: Lucius Tiberius, 8.15pm: Captain Von Trapp, 8.50pm: Secret Advisor, 9.25pm: George Villiers, 10pm: American Graffiti, 10.35pm: On The Warpath
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
