Many museums claim to be guardians of knowledge in their capacities as repositories of information, stories, histories that many claim would disappear in their absence. These artifacts are sequestered in a static form, plucked out of their spatial and temporal contexts and preserved in a sterile environment. But stories, crafts, techniques, systems, knowledge, wisdom are never static. They are in constant motion, evolving within the cultures that generate them.

Project Statement

To give the remaining bronze casters and their families agency over what this craft will look like moving forward, the project will create a collection of digital and physical artifacts that tell three stories about Benin’s stolen cultural heritage.

• The first story is the history of the dispersal of Benin cultural artifacts throughout the Global North as repositories of significant cultural, historical, and technical knowledge.
• The second story follows the changes Edo bronze and brass casters have adopted as a survival mechanism while efforts for repatriation have crawled forward and stalled.
• The third story is a speculative re-contextualization of the Western institutions as fruits of the labor of ancient bronze casters, giving them the status of rooms in the destroyed Benin palace.

Research Questions

The outgoing president of Nigeria, President Buhari, transferred the ownership of the cultural artifacts from the Federal Government of Nigeria to their rightful owner, the Oba of Benin Kingdom. Museums joined Macron in a reversal of decisions and annulment of vows to repatriate the artifacts. This stalled the most promising attempt at a large scale repatriation.

This incident prompted the following questions for me:

• Which communities have physical, spatial, and/or digital access to stolen cultural artifacts from the Kingdom of Benin, Nigeria?
• What are innovative ways to restore the ownership of cultural artifacts? How can we redefine digital access, blurring the lines between the digital and spatial experiences of the most affected communities?
• How can we redefine the context in which Africans interact with historical artifacts (and the institutions that hold them) as integral parts of our complex history with colonialism and current wrestles with neo-colonialism?

Key Terms

Be·nin Bron·zes

/beˈniːn ˈbrɒnzɛz/ noun

a term used to describe thousands of items stolen from the palace of the Oba (king) of Benin in February 1897 during the British Punitive (Colonial) Expedition to (Military Campaign on) Benin. They are named for the large number of bronze works made as part of a 800-year old Edo tradition.

Be·nin

/beˈniːn/ noun

Kingdom of Benin (Benin Empire/Edo Empire): also known as the Benin Empire or Edo Empire, one of many indigenous peoples within what is now known as Nigeria.

- not to be confused with the Republic of Benin, the modern state that once was the Dahomey Empire

Bini: the members of the Kingdom of Benin

- also referred to as the people of Benin or the Edo

in·dex

/ˈinˌdeks/ noun

2. “an indicator, sign, or measure of something.”

• “a number giving the magnitude of a physical property or another measured phenomenon in terms of a standard.”

4. “a pointer on an instrument, showing the quantity, a position on a scale, etc.”

verb

3. “(of a machine or part of one) rotate or otherwise move from one predetermined position to another in order to carry out a sequence of operations.”

(Oxford Languages)

se·ques·ter

/səˈkwestər/ verb

1. “isolate or hide away.”
2. “take legal possession of (assets) until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met.”
3. “take forcible possession of (something); confiscate.”
4. “legally place (the property of a bankrupt) in the hands of a trustee for division among the creditors.”

(Oxford Languages)

The Catalogue

View the first volume of the catalogue on Issuu Catalogue 2723/5211

The Data

Digital Benin: a digital archive funded by Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung (Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation) that houses the world’s most comprehensive collection of information about the Benin Bronzes. It is limited to the institutions (collections, museums, etc.) that have publicly acknowledged their possession of Benin Bronzes and were willing to provide information about the Bronzes they hold. It does not include individuals or families who have these cultural artifacts in their possession. The team behind Digital Benin was working under the excitement of a bygone era (as of 2023) of many international institutions planning to return the Benin Bronzes to a new museum in Nigeria. The project does not take a critical view of the displacement of the artifacts, focusing more on creating a narrative around the Edo history and historic aspects of Edo culture from an indigenous perspective. When I pulled and began to work with the archive, there was limited data on provenance, which I used as a proxy for the actual movement of the artifacts from Edo to their current locations. This data comes from the institutions themselves. Digital Benin does not verify or discredit any of the data. Given the contentious nature of the cultural artifacts, institutions are incentivized to withhold data that could be even more damaging to their reputations. This affects their use of language: words like “acquired” may be used for items stolen from the palace.

• 5,211+ cultural artifacts
• 18,237 images
• 1,032 unique spatial-temporal routes to their current locations
• 131 museums
• 1,152 institutions, groups, and individuals identified in the provenance of each item

Guide to crowdsourcing photographs of the stolen Benin Bronzes