Three years ago, the Horniman Museum agreed to return 72 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. The museum’s chair hailed the decision as ‘moral and appropriate’. Curators were promised that they were handing those artefacts over to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, a government agency tasked with preserving the country’s heritage.
But where are the Bronzes now? The sad reality is it is almost impossible to find out. Since their return, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s President, has signed an official gazette confirming the Oba of Benin, not the National Commission, rightfully own the artefacts. There is little evidence that they are on display in any Nigerian museums. Have they disappeared into his private collection? The brass of the bronzes was likely traded by the Oba of Benin with Portuguese merchants in return for slaves. Now the artefacts have returned to the descendants of the man who sold them.
Across Britain, artefacts are being returned at an alarming rate. Five years ago, the greatest threat to preserving Britain’s history was the tearing down of statues and the changing of street names. Now it is the gradual emptying of our museums.
In 2023, to slow the tide of ‘decolonisation’ in public places, the government published its ‘Retain and explain’ guidance, informed by the Policy Exchange paper History Matters: Principles for Change, written by Sir Trevor Phillips. But museums and galleries were left without guidance. In a new report, Phillips and I have called for a coherent set of principles for restitution.
Decisions about restitution are increasingly driven by emotion, not scholarship. Well-intentioned curators are responding to pressure from activists to return artefacts. In many cases, this means ignoring the concerns of a growing diaspora community. 10.4 million people living in the UK were born elsewhere. In the case of the Bronzes, artefacts will be shipped away from the hundreds of thousands of Nigerians in Britain who view them as an important connection to their heritage.
At the moment, despite being some of our most valuable institutions, museums are offered little more guidance on restitution than a practical guide from Arts Council England, leaving museum stewards to make their own ‘ethical assessment’. Meanwhile, activist bodies like the Museums Association encourage member organisations to engage in ‘repatriation and restitution’ as part of taking the ‘initiative to decolonise museums and their collections’.
The result: hasty restitution with little concern for the public, the preservation of artefacts or of diaspora communities who may wish to see them. In some cases, decisions which should be taken at the highest level, are instead devolved to working groups. Jesus College, Cabridge’s decision to return a Bronze Cockerel, for example, was delegated to their ‘Legacy of Slavery Working Party’.
This is not to say restitution is always wrong. But museum stewards need a coherent framework through which to work when assessing claims. High quality historic provenance research should be undertaken to determine whether an artefact was obtained legally, a public consultation should be used to assess the interests of museum visitors, and artefacts should never be sent somewhere where their future preservation and accessibility cannot be guaranteed.
If an artefact is sent to a private collection or given to a museum where it might be damaged or sold, then it is lost to millions of potential future visitors. Our research has shown that museum stewards are not always giving restitution decisions the care that they merit. Instead of blindly following activist demands, it is time for a new approach.
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