Comprehensive database of Benin bronzes held by museums raises questions about where they belong by charting provenance
The British Museum, the holder the highest number of pieces from Benin, is prohibited from permanently removing items from its collection under a 1963 UK law.“This platform is a knowledge-producing forum and not an instrument for restitution,” said Plankensteiner. “But it shows the objects’ local significance, how important these objects used to be, and what role they still play in ceremonial culture.
By objectively charting provenance histories, Digital Benin indirectly raises some questions about where these objects should belong. Another, made of ivory with spots of inlaid copper recycled from rifle percussion caps, was presented as a gift to Queen Victoria by Adm Harry Rawson, who led the attack on Benin City on 18 February 1897 and supervised the burning of nearby chief compounds and villages.
“In Edo culture only the Oba [king] was allowed to wear ivory, so to claim it as a trophy by the British was a marker of a transfer of power,” said Felicity Bodenstein, an art historian at the Sorbonne in Paris. The two leopards remain on a long-term loan to the British Museum and are owned by King Charles III.
“This is a seed project that will help us to research networks of collecting, but also plunder and smuggling,” said Jonathan Fine, the director of Vienna’s Weltmuseum. The digital database has funding to be updated with further archival records and photographs and ownership changes for another year, after which the organisers said they were hoping to hand it over to a suitable institution in Nigeria.
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