As today, the 18th of May 2022, marks the international celebration of museums and the theme is the power of museums it’s important to mark a historic moment in what good the power museums hold can do.
For years protests have called on museums to acknowledge their difficult histories which include their roles in the looting of former colonized lands, and displaying prized stolen artifacts that museums must adapt their policies to address racism and other harms caused by history.
In a win for the movement towards addressing these past harms the Smithsonian is returning its collection of Benin Kingdom Court Style artworks to their homeland in Nigeria.
As one of the world’s largest cultural organization this will hopefully set a new bar for how museums respond to changing attitudes about cultural heritage and the legacy of colonial violence.
The Smithsonian will return works that are linked to an infamous British raid on Benin City in 1897.
Almost half of the collection had been on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. Which will be shipped to Nigeria — at the Smithsonian’s expense — and will then be displayed at the National Museum of Benin in Benin City.
Abba Isa Tijani, the director general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments addresses that The Smithsonian will give up its ownership of the works. And as a part of the agreement between the two countries some pieces will return to Washington on long-term loan in an exhibition that Nigerians will curate.
“This exhibition will be from the perspective of Nigeria and how we want them to be displayed,” Abba Isa Tijani explains, adding that the Smithsonian has pledged to fund education programs for young Nigerians. “What is more important than being in control of how your heritage, your artifacts, are displayed?”
National Museum of African Art Director Ngaire Blankenberg described that this repatriation is the first step in the art museum’s effort to shed its Eurocentric past and forge a new model for a global audience.
“This is about a new possibility. The repatriation is about past violence and harm,” Blankenberg said last week. “I don’t believe it ends there. We have to stop the harm and imagine a new way of working, of how we can do this differently together.” - Ngaire Blankenberg
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