The trouble with returning the Benin Bronzes

Once, museum curators saw their job as collecting, conserving and displaying to the public works of art or humbler objects that were beautiful, interesting and representative of a time and a place. Now many of them want to get rid of, or at least hide away, objects that they pronounce shameful. Cambridge University, under its present administrators, has been following the fashion. The Fitzwilliam Museum has taken down a painting by Stanley Spencer – ‘Love among the Nations’ – on the grounds that ‘Raised on the moral rightness of British imperial rule, Spencer imagines civilisation firmly in the West and savagery in its colonies’. So that’s you dealt with, Spencer.

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – a small treasure-house of objects from round the world – decided to dispose of 116 ‘Benin Bronzes’. However, what was planned as the rapid ‘restitution’ of ill-gotten gains seems to have run into difficulties and has been postponed until October. No reasons have been made public, but it seems likely that those who made the original decision have suddenly realised that it raises issues more complex than they supposed.

The Cambridge authorities were keen to go along with the Benin Dialogue Group, which after originally advocating a programme of loans, has for some time been promoting complete transfer of ownership. The university agreed to this in principle even before a formal request had been made. When that request came, in January 2022, it was in the name of the ‘Federal Republic of Nigeria’, and the clear understanding was that the bronzes would become state property to be held in a public museum.

The main Cambridge proponent was Professor Nicholas Thomas, the director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, whose interests ‘range widely over art in Oceania, European travel, colonial histories, museology and the history of collections’.