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.