✨"Letter to a Young Archaeologist"✨
I was delighted to contribute a text to this lovely monthly @archaeologyuk series, beautifully curated during 2022 by @McfadyenLesley & @clairecorkill
you can read my letter, plus those of other contributors, here >>> archaeologyuk.org/resource/lette… 1/16
It’s a strange calling, to get your hands dirty with the detritus of the past, to crouch with a trowel in a muddy trench, to trace the delicate contours of earth works in rainy fields, to run soil through a sieve, to ink letters and numbers onto potsherds and ziplock bags,

THREAD - a quick commentary on what today's massive news of the @smithsonian committing to returning its entire Benin 1897 collection means

https://twitter.com/profdanhicks/status/1501198260068917255

1/14 this announcement by the Smithsonian is another sign that we are witnessing a fundamental global shift in the ethics of museum curation
in the past a self-selected handful of the richest and most powerful institutions has sought to control, dominate and close down the debate

every now and then working at a museum like the @Pitt_Rivers means that you experience a moment of sheer terror and shock

I had one of those moments, a truly M.R. James winter night kind of moment of revelation, while working yesterday evening

(THREAD) I was working through some historic photographs of museum curators to send to a colleague as part of a current artist collaboration

Most of the photographs were from the first decade of the 20th century, shared with a designer we're working with for details of dress

My new interim report on what we currently know about the Benin collections of the University of Oxford has just been published online - read it here >> prm.ox.ac.uk/benin-bronzes the 229-page report summarises
- 145 objects which provenance research suggests were looted in the Benin 1897 attack
- 15 further objects possibly from that attack
- more items taken in other expeditions in what's today Nigeria
- further Benin objects exported in the 20th century

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) 👇 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…

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

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

✨ 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

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…

@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 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

just updating my clippings

“the destruction of the Kingdom of Benin was in retaliation for colonial insurrection” is not even the silliest claim in today’s FT review ffs

seriously this is unbelievable

https://twitter.com/profdanhicks/status/1365373119251304448

can someone close to @TristramHuntVA please persuade him that this is NOT the moment to resurrect Hugh Trevor-Roper's claim that there is no history in Africa?

even the British Museum lumps Africa and Asia with the Americas!

This proposed scheme is Trumpian in its world-view

this opportunistic restructuring at the @V_and_A is a disaster for all who love museums

the V&A was never a historical museum — it's a museum of design

imposing a "chonological" structure is an attack upon the very purpose and ethos of the institution

theartnewspaper.com/news/radical-r… solidarity with all those affected by this restructuring and whose jobs are under threat @VandPcs

The new DCMS "Rapid Evidence Assessment: Culture and Heritage Valuation" is meant to be a literature review on ideas of heritage value.

It includes the most professionally illiterate definition of "culture and heritage physical assets" I've ever read 👇

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl… the consultants missed a trick by not including fascist architect Albert Speer's theory of Ruinenwerttheorie (ruin value) here — could've gone down quite well with the Common Sense Group

Pretty sure it wasn't written by a "baying mob", but the new DCMS report on valuing heritage assets defines sculptures and plaques as — wait for it — "moveable heritage".

And, specifically, as examples of a class of heritage "that can be moved into a collection or is mobile" A very sensible piece by Robert Hewison on the new report here artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/artic…

yesterday was the 124-year anniversary of the sacking of Benin City by a British naval force

Here is a link to my op-ed published in Thursday's Daily Telegraph — and below is the text as a THREAD (1/34)

https://twitter.com/profdanhicks/status/1324640013120872448

(2/34)
I had always believed what I’d been told about the Benin Bronzes. That the British punitive expedition against Benin City (today in Edo State, Nigeria) was a necessary reprisal against a bloody massacre. That there was a grim justification to the looting of the city

Page 3 of today’s @Telegraph For those who missed my op-ed in for @Telegraph, referenced in this news story, here is is >> telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-se…

It's been a busy week around the publication of #TheBrutishMuseums - here's a quick summary of some of the key media coverage in case you missed some of it!

1/ On Tuesday I spoke to @AaronBastani for @novaramedia 2/ Yesterday I published this op-ed on returning the Benin Bronzes in the Daily Telegraph telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-se…

All my retweets are endorsements. How that cannot be the case for everyone is something I will never understand about what people say on this website.