Repatriation and Benin Bronzes at Wellesley College and Beyond
By Natalie Grant, Caroline Witty, Charnell Jones, and Chloe Theriault
The last several years have borne witness to significant upheaval in American museums: movements towards a fairer art world have spurred advances in digitization, accessibility, and the representation of diverse artists and works in prominent collections. Central to this work has been the interrogation of what ought to be done with stolen art — art that was taken, most usually violently, from its nation or community of origin by colonial forces. Collectors both large and small are increasingly reckoning with the social, ethical, and economic concerns associated with repatriation, or the return of art to the people and places who created it.
The Davis Museum at Wellesley College, one of the nation’s oldest art collections, is no exception. Its expansive collection includes several pieces from prominent twentieth-century Western artists, including O’Keeffe, Picasso, and Matisse, many of which were bequeathed from the personal collections of Wellesley College alumni and former faculty. Among these donated works are three Benin Bronzes, which are part of a large group of brass, ivory, and bronze sculptures that trace back to the 16th century in the West African Kingdom of Benin (now the Federal Republic of Nigeria). In their entirety, the Benin Bronzes number several thousand, comprising largely (though not entirely) of cast metalworks.
How did the Benin Bronzes come into the possession of Western museums? In 1897, the British Army raided and looted Benin City, taking with it many Benin Bronzes, which were then divvied up among the invaders, the British royal family, and others willing to pay. The brutal acquisition was not an isolated occurrence — today the British Museum holds nearly 73,000 African objects stolen under imperial rule.
The Benin Bronzes, which have long been revered by the Western art world for their artistic and technical brilliance, have been predominantly held in European and American museums and private collections since the looting. Many prominent museums in Europe and the United States, including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have displayed and profited from the Benin Bronzes in their collections for decades.
In 2019, the director of the British Victoria & Albert Museum, Tristram Hunt, went as far as to argue that relinquishing control of these stolen artifacts would be a political risk for Britain and the empire’s culture, stating that “alongside colonial violence, empire was also a story of cosmopolitanism and hybridity: through trade, religion, war and force, peoples and cultures mixed and, in many cases, expressed that exchange and interaction through the type of material culture now found in museums.” Cosmopolitanism, a political philosophy dating back to the Greek Stoics, touts the notion of global citizenship and cross-national equity. Sometimes, however, like in this selection from Hunt, the term presupposes equality without addressing historical patterns of Western abuse – including enslavement and empire. As the prominent postcolonial scholar Edward Said writes, it is “partly because of empire [that] all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic.” To dismiss or outright ignore the role of colonization in the global connection associated with cosmopolitanism is to erase the structures and systems that have resulted in continued Western hegemony. The thievery and Western reappropriation of non-Western art and cultural artifacts, such as that of the Benin Bronzes, allows colonial forces to dictate the narrative of the subjugation they’ve imposed.
So how exactly has the art world maintained and justified the “ownership” of these stolen pieces for decades or even centuries? One long-standing argument made by museums, private owners, and supporters is that they, the Western holders, are better able to conserve and protect art than their nations of origin. This line perhaps had some credence during times of violent upheaval or turnover, which have often been consequences of the imperialism inflicted by the nations who currently hold the works in question. In the context of Nigeria’s Benin Bronzes, though, and many other stolen works, political instability is no longer the threat the West has long perceived it to be. The continued reflex of museums to justify their ownership this way when political, social, and economic circumstances have changed vastly everywhere — not just in formerly colonized nations but worldwide — is rooted in Eurocentrism and racism. Consider in contrast that many Western nations that are considered art havens have themselves experienced periods of extreme violence and instability. No one has ever asserted that Britain was an unfit home for the art they created and collected, even during the Blitzkrieg of World War II; despite the fact that the Nazi occupation and looting of France’s art collections resulted in the loss of 100,000 works, the country’s ability to house and conserve many of Western art’s most famous pieces has never been questioned. Yet, England, France, and other western European nations have been allowed to maintain their collections, and are to this day championed as global centers of art and culture. What, other than race and colonization, can explain this disparity between white and European nations and those of the Global South?
Western holders have justified their continued ownership not just on the grounds of safety and conservation but also on multiple axes, including provenance (or a legitimate, documented claim to ownership). Museum collections generally consist of works that have been donated, bequeathed, or purchased – this is true for prominent museums, like the Smithsonian, as well as academic collections, including that at the Davis Museum. This is where legitimacy can get complicated. Layered within provenance are many levels of unknowns and uncertainties about when art has traded hands, and whether those exchanges occurred fairly, under duress, or with certain legal conditions that may or may not have been respected. Many international firms such as Christie’s, following UNESCO, have outlined certain best practices for ethical acquisition. Legality nonetheless presents a persistent complication, as documentation is often scarce or even nonexistent. For museums, including the Davis, such ethical concerns are challenged by the notion that stolen objects may have been “legitimately” purchased and then donated, often by wealthy collectors who are now deceased and unable to offer information about an artwork’s lineage. All three Benin Bronzes housed at Wellesley College were gifted by donors — while the museum offers limited details online about their provenance, the claim of legitimacy associated with donations and bequeaths has complicated the potential for and process of repatriation. As Wellesley Professor Bryan Burns explained to the Wellesley News in an interview, without documentation, “museums can choose to believe that [works in their collections have] a more benign history.”
As calls for repatriation mount, museums are obligated to respond to and correct the wrongs that lay at the foundation of their collections. The Davis Museum, however, has been slow to act on the problem of its Benin Bronzes despite having engaged in conversations about repatriation for other Indigenous art. In 2017, the Davis met with representatives from Native American tribes and First Nations about returning artifacts of cultural significance to comply with the 1990 Native American Graves Repatriation Act. Returning the Benin Bronzes, they claim, is more complicated, as the “repatriation of the Benin Bronzes requires international legal action on behalf of the parties claiming the artifacts to be theirs.”
In the last year, in response to growing public concern and activism, many prominent museums have agreed to return some of the Benin Bronzes in their collection. Germany, one of the primary nations laying claim to Benin Bronzes, has begun to repatriate their collection. Similarly, the Smithsonian removed their Benin Bronzes from display in 2021. While some of the worst offenders and perpetrators, such as the British Museum, retain their Benin Bronzes, the call for repatriation continues. Beginning to return the Benin Bronzes to the nations, communities, and people from whom they were stolen is a critically important step in undoing the colonial harm inflicted so many years ago.
Photo credit: Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA.