Once a stolen work of art is returned to its rightful owner, how does its fate still concern the thief? The ethical-aesthetic question can be reformulated in another way: if a museum has protected a looted work for decades, should it obtain guarantees of the continuity of good museum treatment before returning it?
The vast museum world is confronted with this puzzle by the most recent developments in the long and very complex saga of the Benin bronzes. Thousands of plaques and busts of the XVIe and XVIIe centuries were seized from the royal palace located in Edo, the royal capital of Benin (in present-day Nigeria), during a bloody punitive expedition by the British army in 1897. The treasure was then dispersed in public collections and private Westerners.
On March 28, the then President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, signed a decree designating the current Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, as the sole legitimate possessor of all bronzes looted as war chests. The decision concludes years of wrangling over the question of ownership of the works, which the National Commission for Museums and Monuments of Nigeria also claimed.
The decree specifies that the heir of the former kings of Benin will be able to keep the precious objects in his palace or elsewhere. The oba could also lend them or organize his own exhibitions.
The fate of the Nigerian museum, which has been planning for years to host the bronzes, also seems to be at stake with the presidential decree. Several Western museum institutions relied on this new African equipment to continue the preservation of works according to industry standards.
The effects of the surprise blow are already being felt. Two different heavy tendencies are beginning to appear: some want to pause the restitution plan, others want to maintain it despite the uncertainty.
The Museum of Anthropology and Archeology at the University of Cambridge announced in May that it was pausing its plan to return 116 bronzes from its collections. The return to Africa was due to begin this month, after years of negotiations.
The Smithsonian, the museum complex in Washington, says on the contrary that it does not have to judge the fate reserved for the repatriated works. Nigeria could “give them away, sell them, exhibit them”, the New York Times the institution’s spokesperson, Linda St. Thomas. “In other words, they can do whatever they want with it. »
The “sin of restitution”
The Digital Benin platform, launched in November 2022, lists more than 130 museums with bronzes, spread over 20 countries. The global hunt has located approximately 5,250, including 11 in Canada. These are in the Royal Ontario Museum (4), the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology (1), the Canadian Museum of History (1) and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) (5).
The director of the latter, Stéphane Aquin, explains to the Duty that no request for restitution has been made to his establishment and that, if necessary, the MMFA would respect the Nigerian legislative framework. “It is not up to us to decide how the returned works should be used,” he adds.
The French and German governments have multiplied promises and solemn declarations since the beginning of the decade. Berlin signed the first Western agreement with Nigeria last year, for the restitution of around a thousand works. The first twenty bronzes were awarded at a ceremony in December 2022 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic.
Nigeria’s recent presidential decree soon followed the return of these early historical sculptures. Their “privatization” for the benefit of the oba restimulates criticism of this desire to correct a “dark colonial history”. The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungwho revealed to the Germans in early May the new developments in the long saga of the Benin bronzes, wondered if it was not a “sin of restitution”.
“Only the naive (to put it mildly) will be surprised, wrote a few days later. The gallery of artin a column. It had to happen, and it happens even sooner than we thought: a massive restitution operation turns into a farce, and works returned to be kept in a museum (which is built with the money of the country which is ‘separates!) are now private property. »
It is rather, in this case, a restitution to the royal family alone rather than to the Nigerian nation. A bit as if paintings were returned to the British crown rather than to the British Museum.
There will be no shortage of controversies and intricacies in the years and decades to come. It is estimated that around 90% of African heritage is found in the northern hemisphere and that 5% of this heritage is exhibited in museum halls. An expert report in 2018 identified at least 90,000 objects from Africa in French public collections, and its authors recommended that restitution be encouraged.