The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution

by Dan Hicks

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 336
Rating:

Synopsis:

Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museum, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.

It’s difficult for me to evaluate Dan Hicks’ The Brutish Museums, since it’s not really my field and at times he gets quite technical and academic. It feels like the audience for this isn’t really clear: is it those who visit museums? Is it activists? It doesn’t quite feel like it’s other curators… As a result, that makes it a bit of an uneven read.

I’d been hoping for more detail about the actual Benin bronzes and how they’ve been displayed and discussed, but really this is about the wrong that’s been done — it could be about any kind of object displayed in a museum, it’s just an exemplar of a particularly egregious episode of looting, slaughter, and display of spoils.

It’s an interesting read, though it’s hard to know what to do with the information. It’s definitely a viewpoint worthy of thought, though: those who visit museums can be helping to perpetuate harm.

Rating: 3/5