From the magazine

Is the tide turning on restitution? 

The case for the return of the Benin bronzes seems to be unravelling

David Abulafia David Abulafia
Benin bronze, 18th century, on display at the Grassi Museum of Ethnology, Leipzig: one of the 1,130 objects that the German government has pledged to return to Nigeria Peter Hirth / Laif
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 18 January 2025
issue 18 January 2025

When passions are aroused, all of us are liable to overstate our case. Dan Hicks, a curator at Oxford’s extraordinary Aladdin’s Cave of anthropology, the Pitt-Rivers Museum, is perhaps a case in point. A Swedish academic, Staffan Lunden, has convincingly argued that Hicks is guilty of ‘distortion’ when writing about the British raid on Benin in 1897, which brought several thousand objects, including finely wrought brass statuettes, to museums across the world.

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