Nov. 7 (UPI) — A long-awaited database of Benin bronzes, a huge trove of artistic and cultural items looted from the Kingdom of Benin through the British Empire in 1897, was unveiled Friday.
The Kingdom of Benin, which has no connection to the posh country of Benin, is now Nigeria’s Edo state and the database could pave the way for the return of those products to the African country.
The British Foreign Office acquired piles of works after the raid and donated them to the British Museum, which now owns more than 900 alone.
Others said its provenance came from auction houses and wealthy patrons of art, from the former U. S. vice president to the former vice president of the United States. U. S. Nelson Rockefeller to Wilhelmina, the former Queen of the Netherlands. Even the Walt Disney World Company has been indexed on the provenance of eight objects.
“It should be noted that the quality of provenance knowledge provided through museums varies greatly from one establishment and object to another,” reads a warning on Digital Benin’s website.
“Before this verbal exchange began on Digital Benin, there was no catalogue where the pieces were,” Anne Luther, a virtual humanities expert who controlled the project, told the Financial Times.
Some world leaders have already taken steps to provide restitution to Nigeria and other African countries for looted art.
French President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech in Burkina Faso that he wanted, within five years, to create the conditions “for the transience or definitive restitution of African heritage to Africa. “
“I am satisfied that much of the cultural heritage of several African countries is in France,” he said at the time.
However, some in the United States consider it “illegal” to move the Smithsonian-owned Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.
The Restitution Study Group, an organization involved in slavery justice, sent a letter last month to Vice President Kamala Harris, Chief Justice John Roberts and the Smithsonian board of directors highlighting Benin’s ties to slavery in the United States.
“We are going to vote ‘No’ on the arrangement of Benin’s 20 bronzes that the Smithsonian has announced it will vote on soon. If you can cancel the previous vote on allocation 39, we ask you to do so as well. “
The organization said Benin’s bronzes were cast in steel shackles that Benin paid for other people the Kingdom of Benin sold in the transatlantic slave industry from the sixteenth century onwards.
“We do not believe that he would betray the American public and the interests of the descendants of other enslaved people through the Kingdom of Benin by providing the enslaved bronzes to the heirs of Nigerian slave traders,” the letter read.
“The director of the National Museum of African Art misled us about the history of the bronze slave industry. We also intentionally deceived you. The origin of the slave industry is true, she says, it is not. But the Kingdom admits the fact in its 2018 e-book The Beninese Monarchy on pages 205 and 103. “