Tweet

Dan Hicks

28 Oct, 10 tweets, 6 min read

it's been a very busy week for the return of looted objects from France to Bénin 🇧🇯 and from the UK to Benin City, Nigeria🇳🇬

here's a summary of what's been going on (THREAD) 👇

@quaibranly

1/ a "farewell exhibition" is being held at the @quaibranly
displaying the 26 items of the Trésor de Béhanzin, looted from the Abomey Palace in the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892—which will be returned to Cotonou next month
The exhibit is open till Sunday quaibranly.fr/fr/expositions…

@FelwineSarr

2/ a major conference was held to mark this landmark return, with speeches from many of the key players including Prof @FelwineSarr and Prof Bénédicte Savoy @KuK_TUBerlin — who compared this watershed moment to the fall of the Berlin Wall: "there was before, and there was after"

3/ you can watch back yesterday's MQB conference, opening with Emmanuel Kasarhérou (président du musée du quai Branly and Paul Akogni (directeur du Patrimoine culturel du Bénin), here >>

4/ last night — on the same day as the ceremony in Paris for Bénin — a ceremony was being held last night at Jesus College Cambridge, in which the college's brass cockerel, looted from Benin City in 1897, was formally returned to the Nigerian delegation cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge…

5/ then today, another ceremony formally to hand over the University of Aberdeen's Benin Bronze to the Nigerian delegation is being held abdn.ac.uk/news/15479/

@britishmuseum

6/ earlier this week the Benin Dialogue Group was meeting at the @britishmuseum
during proceedings—reportedly blindsided during the drinks reception—Hartwig Fischer was served with a letter demanding the returns
a good report by @Channel4News here >> channel4.com/news/nigeria-s…

7/ the significance of the letter is hard to over-state — since a key line from European institutions has been that "no formal request for returns has been made"

@lemnsissay

8/ meanwhile, the longstanding campaign led by @lemnsissay and others to see the return of the Magdala treasures to Ethiopia is gaining ever wider support, including last month Steven Fry, Rupert Everett, and a coalition of peers
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/1…

France has also made returns to Madagascar & Senegal, and has live requests from Mali, Chad & Ivory Coast, plus further demands from Bénin
as for the UK, debates about other looted items is growing—and the old idea you can loan back stolen goods looks ever more untenable [ENDS]

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @profdanhicks

Dan Hicks

@profdanhicks

26 Oct

the Trésor de Béhanzin—looted by General Alfred Dodds in November 1892 from the Palace of Abomey, and donated by him to the French state—is being returned from Paris to Bénin

here’s a shortlist thread of some of the 26 items involved:

1/ the Throne of King Ghézo

2/ The Throne of King Glèlè

3/ the doors of the Royal Palace of Abomey

Read 9 tweets

Dan Hicks

@profdanhicks

26 Oct

just catching up with the Policy Exchange “History Matters Principles for Change” culture war manifesto, and 60 seconds in my first observation is that “the UK’s leading think tank” appears not to understand the difference between English Heritage and Historic England

@MuseumsAssoc

also direct contravention of @MuseumsAssoc ethical guidelines on donors and curatorial integrity here

it will also surprise Oxbridge Governing Bodies that Policy Exchange think that the university’s Vice Chancellor might be a “stakeholder” in their decision-making — while evidently elected student bodies, alumni, unions, the wider public, etc may not be

Read 4 tweets

Dan Hicks

@profdanhicks

20 Oct

✨ the paperback edition of #BrutishMuseums is officially published today, with a new preface and an updated list of museums holding Benin Bronzes! ✨
there are quite a few made-up words and concepts in the book, so to mark the day here are seven of them in a thread 👇

1/ Chronopolitics
the use of time as a mode of colonial domination, including the weaponisation of the discipline of Archaeology #BrutishMuseums

2/ Necrography
An account of death and loss. A death-history. An anti-biography. When applied to material culture, an alternative to the tired idiom 'the social life of things' or 'the cultural biography of objects' #BrutishMuseums

Read 10 tweets

Dan Hicks

@profdanhicks

19 Oct

@tamaralanier

the case of @tamaralanier vs @peabodymuseum is a landmark moment for museum ethics

here is the submission my colleague @nickmirzoeff and I have written in support of Tamara’s case against Harvard—to see these images of her ancestors returned to her

>> ma-appellatecourts.org/pdf/SJC-13138/…

here is some background to the case theguardian.com/education/2019…

@thecrimson

here is @thecrimson’s report on the verdict last March thecrimson.com/article/2021/3…

Read 4 tweets

Dan Hicks

@profdanhicks

5 Mar

@MCHammer

@MCHammer a short thread of the five known Benin ivory hip-ornament masks—small portraits of Idia, first Iyoba (Queen Mother) of the 16th-century Benin Kingdom 👇

@MCHammer

@MCHammer 1/ This ivory Idia mask is in the British Museum. It was looted by Sir Ralph Moor in the sacking of Benin City, and later bought by the @britishmuseum from anthropologist Charles Seligman #BrutishMuseums

@MCHammer

@MCHammer @britishmuseum 2/ This is the ivory Idia hip-ornament mask, also looted in 1897, that is currently in the @LindenMuseum in Stuttgart, Germany (but was formerly in the @Pitt_Rivers second collection)

Read 7 tweets