Katie and Steve speak with their colleague Eden Burgess and guest Dr. Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba, Curator of African Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and an expert in Benin Bronzes, about the artistic history of Benin City in current day Nigeria, the fate of the Benin Bronzes that dispersed around the world after the British invasion and looting of Benin Kingdom in 1897, and how we should think about ownership and possession of these valuable objects today.
Resources
https://vmfa.museum/pressroom/news/dr-ndubuisi-c-ezeluomba-named-vmfas-new-curator-african-art/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/nigeria-stolen-benin-bronzes-london-museum
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/movies/dahomey-documentary-mati-diop.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/arts/design/france-museums-africa-savoy-sarr-report.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65531736
Katie and Steve discuss topics based on news and magazine articles and court filings and not based on original research unless specifically noted.
Episode Transcription
Steve Schindler: Hi, I’m Steve Schindler.
Katie Wilson-Milne: I’m Katie Wilson-Milne.
Steve Schindler: Welcome to The Art Law Podcast, a monthly podcast exploring the places where art intersects with and interferes with the law.
Katie Wilson-Milne: The Art Law Podcast is sponsored by the law firm of Schindler Cohen & Hochman LLP, a premier litigation and art law boutique in New York City. Hi, Steve.
Steve Schindler: Hi, Katie.
Katie Wilson-Milne: How are you?
Steve Schindler: I’m well. You know, I’m just back from London.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Oh, I know. I’m so jealous.
Steve Schindler: I know. Well, you had your fun too.
Katie Wilson-Milne: I was in Milan.
Steve Schindler: You were in Milan, and we’re both at the service of art lawyers. So I was in London at the annual conference of the Art Lawyers Association, which is a London-based organization, which is only a little more than a year old now, but it has really taken off. And there were about 125 art lawyers there, mostly art lawyers, a few artists, and we had a great time.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Yeah. Kudos Martin Wilson for your project.
Steve Schindler: And Amanda Gray.
Katie Wilson-Milne: And Amanda Gray. Great. And I was in Milan speaking at an IBA, International Bar Association, event on artificial intelligence, which is still developing.
Steve Schindler: It’s the topic of the day.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Yeah. Alright. Well, today on the podcast, we’re going to talk about the Benin Bronzes, also in the larger context of efforts to repatriate objects that were looted, stolen, or taken under questionable power dynamics during the colonization of Africa, parts of Africa. And we’re going to specifically talk about Nigeria and the Benin Bronzes, as I mentioned, but I think our conversation will be applicable to many more contexts, as we’ve talked about before in the podcast and undoubtedly will again. So we’re here with two great guests, one familiar, one new.
Our new guest is Ndubuisi Ezeluomba. He is currently the Curator of African Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. He was raised in Benin City, Nigeria, where he initially trained as an artist. Ezeluomba received his PhD in Art History from the University of Florida at Gainesville, where in 2017, he earned the University of Florida Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “Olokun Shrines: Their Functions in the Culture of the Benin Speaking People of Southern Nigeria.” He graduated from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, completing his master’s thesis focused on the contemporary Nigerian sculptor, Obi Ekwenchi. He received his bachelor’s degree in fine and applied arts from the University of Benin. He is internationally recognized as one of the leading curators and scholars in his field. He has contributed to numerous publications, including Black Arts Quarterly, African Arts Journal, Hyperallergic, Routledge Encyclopedia of African Studies, African Artists: From 1882 to Now, and Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, among others. And he goes by Endy, so that is what we will be calling you during the podcast. Thanks for being here. And Endy, right now- thank you so much for being up late to do this- is in Nigeria, where he has a Fulbright Scholarship to study and teach.
Steve Schindler: Our second guest today is Eden Burgess, who of course is a colleague of ours here at Schindler Cohen & Hochman. And it’s great to have her here. Eden has focused her legal career on cultural heritage, the arts, and historic preservation. She represents a diverse array of clients, including museums, auction houses, collectors, foreign states, artists, and nonprofits, as well as Holocaust victims and their heirs and Native American tribes. She’s litigated and resolved complex claims involving Nazi seizures, wartime looting, forced sales, and thefts, and also assists clients with the maintenance and management of their collections and advises on the purchase, sale, and auction of cultural objects. Eden obtained her JD from the George Washington University School of Law and her BA with distinction from the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols scholar, and we’re pleased, of course, to have Eden join us today.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Yes, welcome back, Eden.
Eden Burgess: Thank you.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Alright, Endy, it would be great if you could tell us a little bit about your professional background, I think both in terms of the general subject matter, but also your experience with restitution issues in general.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Okay. Thank you so much, everyone. My academic background is actually squarely focused on African art, and I specialize in the traditional arts of Africa, which obviously meant that I specialize in the materials that fall within the rubric of those things that are now actively participating in the repetition conversation. My core focus was on Benin art, and then when I worked on my dissertation, I focused on the visual cultures of shrine, which is also another traditional artistic practice that doesn’t find its way in museum consciousness, which is the mud sculptures of Benin. My familiarity with Benin art is born out of the fact that I was raised in Benin City, but it was also informed by the existence of Benin art and the consciousness of the general African art studies.
I started out my career being a teacher. I was a professor in Nigeria at the University of Port Harcourt for a few years before I came to America, both to raise a family and also to continue working in my chosen career path, which is to be a professor. In a bid for me not to stay and be doing just adjunct teaching positions, I decided to go back to school to continue and get a doctoral degree from the University of Florida. While working on that degree, I found my way into the museum for the first time in 2016. That was also at the museum where I work currently. I was hired at the time as a specialist in African art. Coming to the museum was the first time that I kind of had an experience about how the museum was set up. That actually has galvanized my critical thinking around the whole subject of museum, and also made me be very observant about what was going on.
So right around the end of 2017, I think, that was when Emmanuel Macron, the young president of France, was doing a tour across West Africa. And that was when he declared that French cultural institutions were going to return all the artifacts that was taken from African countries during colonialism. When that came out, I was still working on that project and my colleagues were very enthusiastic to hear my take when we had a mini conversation about that. But I think that was where I actually got very interested to knowing how that conversation was shaping. And as you will eventually hear towards the end of our conversations today, I have since looked at this conversation from the West, which obviously is where we are operating from today. But I’ve also taken a different call. You know, my artistic brain kind of kicked in where I had to go back to the source to also sense how folks feel about this whole conversation. Because if we continuously perpetuate it from our perspective, from the western perspective, it may look as if it is us who are playing the devil’s advocate. You know, we would decide for folks what they think or not.
So, you know, right from that 2017 onward, I’ve been very much interested and of course, also very biased in my choice of the particular area where I focus on. I focus on Benin art more because of the material. Benin art was made out of permanent material versus many other works that came out from Africa that were made out of organic material that would disintegrate. And if we speak about the cultural significance of the other material, sometimes they don’t apply to the Benin material. So it is because of the preciousness of Benin material and how they circulated within the arena of royalty. That was why I thought that is a material that has the bandwidth to, you know, insert all the energies that I can to speak about. And I was fortunate enough to also be a very deep follower of the cultural practices. So it kind of worked out very well for me. And Benin art is also a very important cultural focus when we talk about conversations about repatriation. There are two Benins.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Yes, please, please do clarify. And then if you could also, when you’re in your mode of clarifying, talk about the terms repatriation versus restitution, which I think would be helpful to clarify.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Okay. So in this case, there are two Benins. There is a Benin that is the country, is the Republic of Benin. It used to be called Dahomey. So, you know, right around during colonialism, that country used to be called Dahomey. But, you know, after independence, they decided to change their name to Republic of Benin. They are French speaking African country, while Nigeria as a country was created in 1914 by the colonial administration when they amalgamated the northern part of that country with the southern part. Prior to 1914, there was no country called Nigeria. So, within the forest region of what today is Nigeria, was a very powerful kingdom, Benin Kingdom.
That Benin Kingdom was the center where a lot of good military and artistic activities took place. Those artistic activities that took place resulted to the material that we talk about today that is called the Benin Bronzes. So, that little forest kingdom is Benin. When the Nigerian nation state was formed, Benin now was reduced to its very small, tiny city within the state of Edo State in present-day Nigeria. That is how we would distinguish them. But the country Benin and the Benin City is the same spelling. But just that when you are reading them, you will see that one of them say Republic of Benin. That is the country. Then the other will say Benin City.
Katie Wilson-Milne: When we talk about the Benin Bronzes, we’re talking about not, which we’ll get more into, not bronze works, but we’re talking about a collection of objects that are from Benin City located in modern-day Nigeria, not a place located in modern-day Republic of Benin.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: That’s very correct. Yes. Also just like the Republic of Benin, Republic of Benin is French-speaking. While, Benin City is English-speaking because of our colonial experiences. Nigeria was colonized by Britain, but Benin Republic, or Dahomey, was colonized by the French. And I think my understanding of the restitution is more, well, it actually means to return, to you know return stuff. And then returning something could be something that was stolen, or it could be something that was taken by force. Well, there are different kinds of ways that things were removed from somewhere. So when you say a repatriation, you are actually returning those things that was looted. Repatriation, to my understanding, is a kind of payment that you give as probably a token for, you know, something that was probably was looted, or something.
Eden Burgess: So the US legal perspective, repatriation, as Endy said, is returning something, but it is exclusively for a foreign sovereign or Native American tribe. It’s basically sovereign to sovereign. Restitution is different from reparations. Reparations, again, as Endy was saying, is about trying to make up for some past wrongs with an alternative form, like money or things like that. And restitution is similar to repatriation, except it’s an institution, a person, a family. It only deals with non-sovereigns. So as far as the US legal system goes, that’s how we distinguish those terms.
Katie Wilson-Milne: And we may talk about both today because of what’s going on in Benin City.
Steve Schindler: Let’s start with- we talk about the Benin Bronzes. Maybe you could just tell us about their history, why they were made, by whom, and the sort of cultural significance of them. And then just also clarify a little bit about what they’re made out of.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Yes. Are they bronze?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: What we know today as Benin Bronzes, or, you know, Benin art, is an art practice or an art tradition that span nearly 600 years. If I’m just trying to be very economical here. The most current evidence for the beginning of Benin Bronzes can be traced back to the 15th century. That was right around the time the Portuguese came to that part of Africa. So with the coming of the Portuguese, there was a huge availability of bronzes that came with them at that point in time. And also how to understand the material has to be put in context.
Within Benin or in Benin Kingdom, kingship or the royalty was an institution that was really feared and revered a lot, because the king was looked upon as the spirit manifestation on earth. So in Benin religious belief or in Benin social religious belief, the king was the sole representative of his subjects in the realm of the spirit. So unlike every other cultures where they have this conception of ancestral presence based on important people who have gone to the realm of the spirits, in Benin, the king or the Oba was looked at as that one among the human beings. So he was revered a lot. And the way you could now distinguish the king from the ordinary people in his community was through the items, or the various items that he- only him- had access to. And among these were actually the bronzes. Some texts refer to them as bronzes, but as the years went on, it kind of became evident that it wasn’t only bronze. There were now a lot of mixture of zinc and copper, and then it now started looking more brass than bronze. But because the earliest scholar wanted to put this importance to the material, we have stuck with using bronze. Even me today, I use both terminologies, because I’m not going to be wrong if I say that, going out of the experiments that have been done.
So, the importance of the material also reflect the enduring presence of the king. Kingship in Benin political consciousness is an enduring institution that will not die. So, the current Oba of Benin has actually brought about 40, or more than 40, kings in continuing succession. The most recent being 2016, when Oba Ewuare II was installed after the passing away of his father, Oba Erediauwa. So, looking at this kind of history, I’ve spoken about the meaning of art in many African cultures many times, where I say that the consciousness for creating art was because of the need to invite ancestral or spiritual presence to come and solve certain community or communal problems. At the end of the service of that invited spiritual entity, the object will eventually live a life whereby they will be discarded and they will disintegrate and melt away. That idea, if you look at it very carefully, you will find that it shows that many cultures produced work with wood most of the time, and other kinds of materials that I will always say perishable or materials that will disintegrate.
But in the case of Benin, that whole concept was turned upside down, whereby we now make works with metal. Metal has this long-lasting thing, so there is no time you want to put metal somewhere and let it disintegrate. It’s not going to happen. And also, organic material that have been fortified with different kinds of organic substances to make them important religious objects, those substances cannot go away from those wood or things. The only way those things go away is when the wood disintegrates. But in the case of Benin, at some point in the history, the way that one king usurped his power and the way another king tried to cancel history was through the melting and reproduction of bronze heads. We’re not going to go into that today. But so, the permanence of the material was a way to suggest to us the permanence of kingship in Benin City.
Steve Schindler: Interesting.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: So, the production of Benin bronze started, like I said, right around the later part of the 15th century, and it continued. And that’s why, if you look at the Benin art chronology, you’ll see that at the very beginning, those heads were kind of very loose, beaded rendition around them. The beads around those works are very few, because they were still trying to understand the skill of casting those bronzes to look like an ideal version of the king or the queen mother. As their skill improved, you will notice that the heads started to be very elaborate. Elaborate in the sense that you now see color beads around them and a lot of projections on the head where they now start looking as if they are this huge. Mind you, what you see is they were not trying to create something out of this world. No. Ideally, when the king goes out for any social function, they are dressed that way, heavily beaded with different kinds of beaded material over and over again. And somebody has, well, in the record, they say that a social outfit that the Oba, or the king puts, on his body to go out for any social function weighs up to 500 pounds sometimes. That’s why it’s very rare for you to see the king standing. He’ll usually sit down in every event that he goes to attend. So this artwork continuously looks at or mimic what an ideal king looks. And then each of those works were made to decorate the altar, you know, royal altars. So when a new king is installed, the craftspeople that made these bronzes were called upon to create an idealized head of the departed king to adorn the altar of the current king. And that altar becomes the most important asset in that palace for the duration of the king who just inherited that of the previous one.
Katie Wilson-Milne: And Endy, let me ask, are all the Benin Bronzes, as we call them, are they all heads of departing kings or queen mothers to honor this long lineage of Obas in the way you’re talking? Or are some of the Benin Bronzes other things? Or is what defines them that they’re all depictions of this royal line?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: A great number of them are supposed to be on those heads, because that is the focus of those creations. Other kinds of objects that come out from those bronzes are actually body adornments. So there are a lot of pendant masks, and there are also heat masks. These were made to look like heads too, but they were smaller. But all those ones are what they had done on their body. There are also some objects that were decorative, like, you know, leopards. And then there were a lot of plaques, like what you see in the British Museum. There are a lot of plaques that were, you know, kind of displayed there in a huge number. So some people thought those plaques played a huge part in those ancestral altars. They don’t. The plaques were actually decorative pieces that decorated the palace of the king in time past. So there were any number of, you know, objects that were created using that particular material.
And, mind you, Benin did not only produce bronzes. They were ivories. Because in time past, every elephant killed in Benin kingdom, one of the tusks belonged to the king. Every, anybody that killed an elephant in any part of the kingdom at that time, they’d bring one tusk back to the king. So that is why you see, when they finished making those bronze heads, they had to carve ivory tusks that stand from the gaping hole in the head of those metal head that has been created. Those tusks go up. And if you look at the iconography in those tusks, they are always speaking about different kinds of things going on within the royal sphere. That is where you will understand the importance of the king, is the most important being that he’s able to take life. If he has the final say for somebody to either live or die in any case, in any adjudication matter that popped up in the kingdom in time past.
Steve Schindler: I just had one question I wanted to just ask you about. And we’ve been talking about the people who created these works. Could you just talk a little bit about who they were? I mean, we’ve been talking about them kind of abstractly as they, but clearly there were a lot of people who were subjects of the kingdom and…
Katie Wilson-Milne: Made all these works.
Steve Schindler: Made all the works, and what do we know, if anything, about them?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Okay, yeah. So the focus of Benin social-political existence revolved around the Palace of the King, and the Palace of the King was a very expansive kind of complex that accommodated a lot of different kinds of things. So within that extensive palace complex had different kinds of artisans. Within them, they have the Ibiwes that actually made beads for the king. And the people that were involved with making these bronzes were called the Igun-Eronmwon. So the Igun is a family or, you know, it’s a section within the extensive palace structure that made bronzes for the king. And that’s why we say in Benin, it was just the Oba that patronized them. Nobody had access to art made out of this material, except one or two in the past that was favored by the king. If the king gives them the permission to own one of these objects. And then a few of these objects were actually given as royal exchanges during the time that they had this very favorable relationship with Portugal. They remain until today at a street in Benin City called Igun Street. That street has been converted to a World Heritage Site. So their job within that extensive palace complex in time past was just to continuously make these things to adorn the Palace of the King. All the palaces of the dukes of the various vassal cities or towns that were occupied by the Benin people. So they were like a production machine that kept making these things for the king. And that was why you see that.
Katie Wilson-Milne: How did they come to work in the palace? Was it families that for generations had made artisans who had made the same materials? Or how did it come to be that they worked in that capacity?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Yeah, that is actually family-centered. So if you go to Igun Street today, you will ask for the Inneh Igun that is the head of the Guild of Bronze Casters. That is the title. And then just like the kingship has this very single line running from the 11th century until today, the Guild of Bronze Casters has the family that the responsibility was placed on. So, you know, he also oversees other bronze casters within that guild. Everybody cannot go and meet the king individually. They have to go through one person. So that Inneh Igun or the elder or the oldest person within that Guild now becomes that link person to create these beautiful things that goes to the king. Of course, today those have changed. But, you know, that was what it was in time past. So it was this arrangement that actually helped them create a huge amount of, you know, objects that adorned the Palace of the King and many other areas.
That would change in February of 1897 when the British, you know, been very dissatisfied by the obstacle they had penetrating the forest region that was caused by the Oba of Benin, that was obstacle to trade their trade ideas and even sign in the Treaty of Protection. It was that confusion that eventually brought on to Benin what we in the books call the invasion of Benin in 1897, where the British came with, you know, machine guns from the port town of Ughoton, and they gone down Benin kingdom, torched the city and, you know, looted all these works that at the time they say was right around 4,000, but we may think it’s more than that. And that has now become the subject of what we’re dealing with today.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right. Well, Endy, let me ask you about that too. So, in 1897, we have this massive British invasion, massacre, looting of Benin City, the palace, itself, of all these objects that we’ve described as Benin Bronzes, but which we know are both a variety of shapes and functions and a variety of materials. What preceded that? I’d just like to get a little bit more historical context. I mean, the British had colonized parts of what is modern-day Nigeria, but they had not yet colonized or taken over or control of Benin City, right? And if you could just describe sort of what the British were doing at that time, and I know there was an attack on the British that gave the sort of excuse or, you know, the reasoning at least on paper for this invasion, but if you could provide some context, that would be great.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Okay. The prelude to the invasion of Benin from different perspectives can be read differently, but I’ll use both the combination of anecdotes to kind of explain that.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Great.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: At the end of every year, because the King of Benin is the spiritual representative of the people in the spirit realm, so everything about religion and ritual things has to go through the Palace of the King. So at a certain time every year, that should be right around December or something like that. That is when is the highest spiritual period of Benin’s kingdom where a lot of rituals are being conducted. Going back to the British coming into Benin at the end of slavery when slave trade was outlawed. In many African cultures, there grew this whole new consciousness about what they call legitimate trade. And that was, legitimate trade now became trade on produce. And produce are what you get from all this, like in Benin kingdom that kind of had its power in the forest region. There were a lot of forest resources coming out from there. And one of those important forest resources was palm oil that helped activated the industrial revolution of Europe at the time. So the palm oil became that crude oil today. So when they introduced legitimate trade, what went on was that a lot of European countries were now going into these little African things, and quickly signing up to Treaty of Protection. And then the whole idea- that also fell within the Berlin Conference of 18, I believe 1864, 18 something- where a bunch of European countries came together to create what they call the partitioning of Africa, how Africa was divided. That was how King Leopold of Belgium got a huge part of the Congo that he used as maybe his estate or something of that sort.
So the British also was actively going around the forest region, signing Treaty of Protection with many small cultures around that place. But they kept having problems penetrating beyond Benin, because the Benin King had this sphere of power around many other small cultures around them. People like Itsekiri, people like Warri, people like even those as far as Dẹgẹma and those Kalabari or people from the riverine area. They were scared of the Benin King, because during the time of Benin King’s expansive power, Benin conquered and occupied a lot of all this area. So they were scared of the King of Benin, and they did not do anything that will offend the King. So even when the British was offering them all this Treaty of Protection, they were still scared of the King of Benin. So when they came to Benin, it was hard. They tried a lot of different ways to get the Benin King to sign the treaty, and the King at the time did not sign the treaty.
And that King was Oba Ovonramwen, who lasted until 1914. So he refused to sign that thing, but he did not outrightly tell them, no, I’m not going to sign it. He told them, sign it yourself. I’m not interested, I’m not going to sign. So probably the British enforcers may have signed it and said that that was what the King had asked them to say. So when they signed those things, they thought they had gotten Benin. And there was a time they wanted to come into Benin right around the time that the King was observing all this cycle of rituals. That was at the end of the year. And they warned them not to come in, because that was what was going on at the time. But because the British thought they had signed that treaty, they can come in anytime they want and go anytime they want, they thought this is now their colony. When they refused to heed the advice not to go into Benin at that time, they went in with the auxiliaries and then the few British guys that were going with- those auxiliaries are actually Nigerians.
And then when they went in, they literally met their untimely death, because the Benin warriors that were keeping watch around the boundaries of Benin, not allowing the intruders to come and disrupt that ritual event going on in Benin, they actually thought these guys were coming to invade their privacy and then they kind of killed them. Just one or two that escaped went back and made the report. And that report was what triggered these numerous events that now led to the invasion of Benin…
Katie Wilson-Milne: In 1897.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Among which was that in February of 1897. So you see, that would have happened in December, because they did not take a long time to take this decision. The decision was very quick, because they already had a preconceived notion that if they take out the King of Benin, that the business of signing of the other treaties within that forest region would be very easy. So when this event happened, it made it easier for them to- with all the stories that they have put around Benin Kingdom, the city of blood, the Benin King being the vampire that kills his people- all those kinds of things were in the British press right around that time. So all these things kind of mixed up together and made the invasion of Benin very, very easy for them to accept that decision.
And then by February 1897, the British guys with the auxiliaries numbering a few thousand, they besieged Benin City. And that thing took like three or so days, and they just went in and finished everything. And then at the end of it all, they caught the King of Ovonramwen and then deposed him to exile in Calabar, never to return to his kingdom until 1914. And they instituted an administrator, because the Benin royal philosophy of the principle of primogeniture will not let another Oba sit in the throne if the one there is still alive. So for the time the Oba was exiled in Calabar from 1897 until 1914, when he died in exile, it was the administrator who was there administering the affairs of state for the colonial administration. Then when Ovonramwen died in 1914, the son of Ovonramwen now took over the reign of Benin Kingdom and continued that lineage until what you have today.
Katie Wilson-Milne: That’s very helpful, Endy. So obviously the looting of what we call the Benin Bronzes is only one small part of this history, and we do not mean to imply that that was the most important or the only aspect of this pillaging or this invasion in 1897 or everything that surrounded that. But I do want to shift to talking about these objects, because that’s why we’re here and that’s your expertise and Eden’s and what we’re interested in. So the British loot at least 4,000 objects during this 1897 invasion of Benin City. And our listeners will know that where this ends up is that we have these Benin Bronzes and all the major quote unquote “universal” or encyclopedic institutions in the West, mostly in Europe, but also in the United States, at the Metropolitan Museum, other museums in the United States. How does that happen? You know, how do we get to the place where we have all of these very important objects in Western museums and now we’re fighting or talking or negotiating about getting them back to Nigeria?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Okay, yes. So after what we call invasion of Benin in 1897, a lot of these objects were actually carried away in huge numbers. Some record will tell you 4,000. Some will say, you know, over 1,000. Some will say [2,000]. So we don’t know exactly what number is, but we know it was a lot because of the few pictures that has come out from that invasion. So when all these things has been rounded up from the Palace of the King of Benin, they were taken to Europe, because that was obviously where it was going to go. Immediately it got to Europe. And there were different kinds of auctions that were conducted. And they had a reason why they needed to conduct that auction. They said they needed to conduct the auction to, you know, raise the money to defray what they call the cost of the punitive expedition or the invasion of Benin. So that was how this object got sold to institution, both in England and in many other European countries. And, you know, kept on circulating within that, you know, Western European sphere until America kind of joined in this whole museum things, and they also started getting stuff from Europe. So it was true auction that first and foremost, this Benin material started circulating around Europe.
Steve Schindler: Yeah, I think my follow-up question, I don’t know if we know the answer to this is, you know, we talk about the bronzes and where they’ve ended up, and now we’re also talking about an auction.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Many auctions.
Steve Schindler: Many auctions, and the seller in that situation, of course, was the British government. And I’m wondering, do we have any sense of what the financial yield was from all of those auctions? Is that something that anyone has taken a look at?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: The person who came close to that kind of story was Annie Coombes. Annie Coombes, I think, wrote a book. I can’t remember the title of the book now. But that was the book that came close, because she was cowering through newspaper clippings that she got from the British press right around 1898, 1899. Because when those objects came to the consciousness of the British audience, they were kind of confused about what they were, because of how they appeared. But through those auctions, a lot of German institution acquired them a lot, because they thought they understood it more than the British people. And that’s why at some point we actually had a lot of Benin material in Berlin more than many other European countries, because von Luschan, who was the curator of the ethnographic museum at the time, actually advised the German government to acquire a lot of this material. We cannot really speak to how much was involved. But I know when I was in college, my art history professor showed us one Benin artwork that was a dwarf holding a pipe that was sold at auction for, you know, up to a thousand pounds. We can actually work out what that turns out to today.
Katie Wilson-Milne: A lot.
Steve Schindler: Yeah, a lot, for sure.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Yeah, so just a small sculpture can be sold at that amount. That was the only, I think it was the only record that they could find at the time. And that has never been my focus, so I probably…
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right. But even that anecdote is incredible. And, you know, I’m thinking about Berlin and obviously the objects that ended up in France, and I assume, you know, much later in America as they re-traded. But it’s very interesting to me that these objects were so desirable immediately upon being looted. You know, what was the context in Europe for people wanting these objects and finding them valuable? In a way, that’s impressive, and it seems positive in the sense that they were being valued as important works of world culture and they were desirable. But I’m also suspicious and confused about the context in which they were snapped up so quickly and at such perhaps high prices. So do you have a sense of that? You know, why they were so popular?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Now, one of my colleagues, an Africanist that recently passed away, his name is Joseph Nevadomsky, who was an anthropologist, but also an Africanist at the University of California Fullerton. He wrote a very extensive text as to why the material became very important. First and foremost, the technique that the casters used in creating those works was the Cire-perdue casting technique. This is a very sophisticated casting technique. So only the technique used would have convinced collectors of the importance of the material. And mind you, before those materials came, there were all this negative information about the Benin people, especially their king, and how they were cannibals who were spilling blood. But actually, if you go back and look at that history very critically, you will find that because those things were altars, and they were casted as human heads, and at altars, they actually spilled bloods of chicken. And sometimes, in the case of Benin, we’re not going to doubt that, because the king had that final say about who dies and who- so a prisoner that has been committed to die, for instance, execution, their blood can be spilled over these altars. That was possible.
So, you know, when this material now came to the consciousness of the British audience and the many European people, they now saw something that did not match with the kind of stories that they heard. Rather, they saw something that was sophisticated more- way beyond what they expected. So that, you know, excitement probably would have led them to dip their hands more in their pockets. And then the kinds of people who were selling these things were actually military officers that came back. So, you know, there were all this importance to the personality, who owned these objects. You even noticed that quite a number of those things sold. You tell you that it was sold by the- Philip Moore’s family. You know, Moore was one of the colonial administrators that started this thing very early on. So, you know, there are all these ways that it would have been possible that they were able to get these things out. But some, obviously, they kept some in their own homes. Because I know in 2016, one of the families of the officers that, you know, conducted that raid, they actually brought a few things back to the Palace of the Benin Kingdom as a way to, like, return what their ancestors took away from the kingdom.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Was it the British government that was selling these works, or was it that they were sort of distributed among the military leadership of this expedition, who then claimed they owned all these objects themselves and sold them individually?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: There’s no record that actually say it was done by the British government. But I also assume that, you know, even today, there is no auction house that tells you that the government of these country is doing this auction. But, you know, for the singular fact that the guys involved in the sale of these objects were actually those that constituted the British government. These were people who were stationed to represent the British government, and they brought these things back. They could sell it legally, and, you know, it goes up. But I don’t know that the British government had a system where they say it is them that were selling things like this. But the monarchy actually got some of these things in their collection.
Katie Wilson-Milne: And maybe the last question on this before we sort of move to more modern topics is, you know, a lot of these works, or at least the ones we are most, you know, exercised about in terms of repatriation today, ended up in big institutions, these encyclopedic museums. So was that because these museums bought them outright, or they were bought by individuals that then donated them to the museums? I’m just wondering how so many of them ended up in these major institutions. And in the US, we know that they were donated, right, by people who purchased them. But I don’t know in Europe if that’s the case, or if the British Museum and, you know, various French museums and German museums purchased them directly out of this punitive expedition.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: My colleague who currently is at the MIT Museum, her name is Kathryn Gunsch. Kathryn Gunsch wrote a book on Benin Bronzes. And also a lot of what she wrote in that book came off from Annie Coombes’ analysis. But I think she did an in-depth study. That was why I made mention of the name von Luschan. Von Luschan was the German who advised the German government, which is the ethnographic museum in Berlin, to acquire a lot of Benin Bronzes. So, you know, that was the case of, you know, one of the institutions that massively acquired Benin object from anywhere they had auctions around Europe at that time. Others, like we all know, a lot of people could buy and have in their private collections. And then at any point in time, they may decide that, okay, I want to either donate it to an institution or offer it to an institution to buy from me. So there have been all these different ways that these objects found their way into museums. And many museums in the United States, I think, at the very beginning, they actually acquired from different dealers, because the art market in African art was very, very vibrant in Europe. We know of how many modern artists kind of got this inspiration at the beginning of 20th century, because they were going around. Pablo Picasso says something about Trocadéro, how they got a lot of things out there. So that was how this thing circulated.
And then many American institutions, some of them were bought, but quite a number of them were actually donated from individuals who owned these things. Fairly recently, I have an individual in Lacombe, Louisiana, who collected a lot of Benin material. When he was stationed to work in oil and gas in Nigeria, he collected Benin objects that numbers over 300. And now he is in his 80s, and he doesn’t know what to do with the material. So he’s now looking for where the material will live. We are currently in negotiation about them, how he wants it. Well, he doesn’t want to part with all of them for free. He says if we can acquire some so that he can have some money. So these are all different ways that objects found their way into museums. So, you know, we cannot really pinpoint and say all of them were bought. I don’t think so. Some of them were donated.
Steve Schindler: So maybe now let’s fast forward over a century and talk about where we are now. And one of the things that just I’m thinking about as we’re talking about this, we’ve had a number of guests on our podcast to talk about Nazi-looted art. And we know that after the Second World War, there were thousands, tens of thousands of works of art and objects that had been looted by the Nazis. And some of them were found and repatriated by the allied forces, by the so-called Monuments Men. But then it took quite a bit of time until really the early 1990s, when we started to see the lawsuits developing here in the United States and formulating theories of recovery, right? And so, now it seems to me what we have is a lot of objects that are now sitting in museums and collections all around the world. But not yet really a developed or clear theory as to how they might go back. And so, Eden, I think maybe we can turn to you and just talk a little bit about what are the sort of international laws and legal regimes that may exist. And then we’ll have to talk a little bit more beyond legal to see what the bases are for the requests for the return of these objects.
Eden Burgess: So the short answer is, with respect to what the legal obligations are, is they really aren’t any. There are a handful of international treaties, you know, the Hague Convention from 1899, which goes really far back, the famous 1970 UNESCO Convention that’s cited frequently in museum cases, and the UNIDROIT Convention ’95 on [Stolen or] Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. I mean, first of all, they all post-date 1897, which, as Endy was explaining, was a punitive expedition and where a lot of objects were lost and looted and taken out of Nigeria and out of Benin City. But regardless of the timing, none of those treaties aren’t really enforceable. There’s a number of other reasons why that’s a problem. But what Nigeria has done with respect to the legal options that are available is they did enter a memorandum of understanding with the United States State Department in 2022. Now, those MOUs under the Cultural Property Implementation Act, the CPIA, are not retroactive. So the list of materials that are protected by that MOU does include Benin Bronzes of various types. But because it’s not retroactive, it only deals with things moving forward, right? So if there’s an attempted import now of Benin Bronzes that don’t appear to have the proper paperwork or say they’re from Switzerland or something like that, that’s when the State Department and the Border Patrol has to step in. But the things that are already here are not impacted by that. But I will say, I think it’s a great step for Nigeria to have done that. It’s an opaque process that takes a long time and is unnecessarily secretive, in my opinion. You know, it took a lot of work, I’m sure, for them to get to that point. So hopefully, that’s the beginning of a longer term relationship on cultural objects.
Steve Schindler: Can I just press one more point, which I just want to go back again to try to differentiate this in some way from Nazi-looted art, what we’ve talked about, because there we had a situation where a government and officials of government stole objects from a whole lot of people, and then years and years went by, and eventually lawsuits were brought here in the United States to- by the heirs of those individuals- to recover those stolen objects. So what makes the situation of this invasion in 1897 and the taking of all of these objects from the Oba by the British troops, what makes that different legally?
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right, right.
Eden Burgess: Well, a lot of the legal arguments that are used in the Nazi-looted art cases could also be used in the Nigerian cases, in these Benin Bronze cases. You know, there could be civil suits for replevin, conversion, or for declaratory judgments of ownership and things like that. The biggest difference is that the Allies knew during World War II that this was going on, and there was Military Law 59 put into place, and Eisenhower issued orders about not taking things that were not related to the conduct of war. There were legal procedures put in place in Europe immediately at the end of the war to allow for claims for restitution of objects and stolen art. And I’m not saying those things were perfect, but that was widely recognized even at the time that what was going on there was wrong and illegal as far as international law of property goes. And with colonolization, we have a different, shifting but different, historical view at this stage, which as we all know, the past five or 10 years has shifted considerably. But I think that they’re sort of at a different place on the continuum with respect to pushing legal claims to places where they haven’t been before and recognizing that colonialization is indeed theft. So I think there’s just some steps we still need to take to get there. But arguably, a lot of those Nazi-looted art cases could serve as interesting precedent for the colonialization.
Katie Wilson-Milne: But I think this is not colonization. What happened in Benin City is a direct looting, right? And obviously, colonization itself was not illegal at the time. And many of the things that happened as part of the normal structure and administration of colonial regimes, not illegal at the time under international law. So that point is important. But this looting, this theft of objects from Benin City by the British, is the issue that it was legal under British law in some way, because it was in response to a prior violent act? Or what is it that makes that theft not actionable under the same laws that we have? Or is the issue because we’re not dealing with this in a US court system by an individual heir of a family from Benin City, we’re dealing with a diplomatic discussion between two nations where it’s just not legal because that’s not where the conversation is happening?
Eden Burgess: Yeah, I mean, I know it was eluding as far as we might define it now. My understanding- and Endy with his historical knowledge could maybe correct or clarify this- but the British being the colonial power there didn’t feel the need to ask permission or to be gentle or really anything. I mean, they were the colonizer and when they wanted to take something and make a point, which is what they were doing here, which is why it was so violent, they were going to do it. So I think at the time it was considered a sovereign in its colony, and that’s all that needed to be shown. Of course, we don’t see things that way anymore, but that’s my understanding of what the attitude was at the time and why it was accepted is the wrong word, but why it was done with impunity.
Steve Schindler: You could say the same thing about Nazi Germany. I mean, they were sovereigns and they took what they wanted to take. I mean, the interesting thing about what you said, Eden and Katie, is that there is, just like in the Nazi-looted art scenarios, we know that there’s a continuum. There’s a continuum of works that were directly taken. There were works that were sold under duress and so-called flight goods, and we know that we approach all of those situations slightly differently under the law. In this case, as Katie said, this is just seems so clear- a taking that was under the way we look at property law generally, it’s a theft. There may be other situations that we know of in colonial regimes that may fall along a continuum, but this one seems so much more obvious, and it’s just interesting to me that there hasn’t been a demand and refusal in New York, or an effort by the Oba to try using our civil system, and we certainly have plenty of lawyers here who would be interested in developing that, but it just hasn’t happened so far, at least.
Eden Burgess: Yes, and I agree with that. And in fact, maybe a more useful parallel are Native American claims to looted cultural objects, which has a lot of analogies. It was a colonialization problem. There’s no question that it was done in some form of duress, whether without authorization or literally stolen or the family’s murdered. I mean, there’s all the very similar facts. I mean, of course, the history is completely different, but I do think that there are some parallels there that we could usefully use the Nazi-looted art cases, of which there are now many, to push those claims forward. We just, we haven’t seen it yet.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Yeah, I mean, one of the distinctions in the Nazi context is that, I mean, there was a barrier to suing the German government or considering what happened there, theft, right? Eden, because it was a country acting against its own people, not in the continuum flight goods cases, but in the Nazi looting cases. And the law sort of got around that in the United States by not seeing the Nazis as the legitimate German government, right? There’s a way in which the law dealt with that, but it’s not that it abandoned the very basic principle of common and civil law, that a sovereign’s acts against its own people are not actionable. And that’s the problem in this colonial context, if it is the case that Britain was the government at that time. And if that’s not the case, then it’s not just European colonialism where we’re going to see a huge change in how we think about property. It’s like the entire world, which has been colonized over and over and again by many different empires. So, I mean, I think there’s something that’s desirable about that stability when we evaluate sovereign action.
Eden Burgess: But so- and I’ll add something to that, Katie, and I hate I hate to bring up the Parthenon Marbles, because…
Katie Wilson-Milne: We love the Parthenon Marbles.
Eden Burgess: We love the Parthenon Marbles.
Steve Schindler: I just saw them.
Eden Burgess: That’s right, you did. And I’ve seen them as well. But, you know, there’s a similar argument there, you know, for a long time. Well, Turkey was the occupying force.
Katie Wilson-Milne: The Ottoman Empire, right?
Eden Burgess: The Ottoman Empire, I should say. Yes, now Turkey. So, there was an order that said Lord Elgin could take these objects out. But was that a legitimate order? There’s arguments about the translation. And we all know the moral and ethical arguments around that issue.So, you’re right, there’s a lot, you know, the Rosetta Stone that was in Egypt, and then first stolen by the French, and then stolen by the British from the French. So, we have a number of major works, and countless minor ones that could end up in this kind of conversation.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right. Right, one thing we have been talking about, Endy, was this difference between, well, basically who’s asking for these works back? Because this conversation from our lawyerly policy perspective really stems from the premise that someone’s asking for these works to go back to their country of origin, which is problematic because none of these countries were in place, you know, at the time, but, you know, the people of origin perhaps. And who, so who is asking? And I’m just curious, your perspective on what people in Nigeria, more specifically Benin City, how they’re feeling about these objects today, and who is making the requests that they come back and to where?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: A great number of repetition conversation, like I said very briefly at the beginning, is actually prompted by a number of us who happen to be in the West, and also Africanists who out of passion for the course or for the discipline, are actually making those advocacy. And so you want to say that a lot of us out in the West here, we are the ones kind of drawing that awareness or making that noise for the whole thing about repetition to be heard, and much loudly as well. It has been ongoing like this for a good amount of time. And I think there was some time, some few years ago where the first time I got to know Eden, and I believe some other of her colleagues, that was when I kind of paid attention a little bit to know how folks feel about these things from back home. There’s always going to be this whole mixed feeling, because why? There are obviously a bunch of scholars back in Nigeria, for instance, and they are, they take cognizant of the conversation out here. So they will always have this opinion that what we are saying here is good, because if we do that, it means that what is obtainable in other places like what Eden was saying as using the NAGPRA thing as a case. A lot has happened within the Native American side of things. So local African scholars will definitely want for that to happen to them too. But we have not really seen a clear case of the Nigerian government requesting for anything. Sometime ago when I heard that an auction was stopped by the Nigerian representative, I later found out that that was not the truth. Who stopped that auction was actually a European curator who happened to be in this country at the time. Then she impersonated herself as if she was a representative of Nigerian government, and then the auction was stopped. Up until today, that auction never concluded.
Steve Schindler: Wow.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: The closest we have had, and that is the one I know for sure, was in 1997 when I was still in college. The father of the current King of Benin during the celebration of the centenary of the invasion of the Benin Kingdom by the British, read this one hour long speech that he had, and then at some point within that speech, he kept making reference to Benin art that was looted, and he made an advocacy then, which obviously is the closest that I’ve come to see or hear, that they wanted those works to come back, because that was the codex of their history. But he was also quick to add to that speech, that even though they want them back, they don’t want all of them to come back, that some should remain out there as an outlier to show the world what Benin artists, or what I call craftspeople, were able to do or create during that time. That is the closest I’ve come to hear.
Besides that, every other thing we do, what we think we should do, what is moral, and even I’ve also jumped in the bandwagon and say, rather than American institutions sit by the fence and say, we were not part of colonialism. I became actively monitoring what was going on in Europe. When that group that eventually started working with the Benin people to build the museum that is currently under construction, I participated to make sure those happened. But all this noise, all these things you hearing are actually coming from us here. Folks back home, some of them will say, “it is not going to benefit us in any monetary term.” That’s how some of them feel. Some of them feel, especially those who look at it against the backdrop of their religious inclination, they may tell you these are practices that we have been admonishing in church, American Pentecostal churches, not to look back to, that they are the ways that have made progress for us very slow. So they are kind of, they care less about that. But I think because of the heat we have generated from this, the interest is now there to receive things and that’s why you see that things come back to Benin, and there is this pomp and celebration that goes with it.
Katie Wilson-Milne: But Endy, I have to ask- I mean, I think this is such an important point, but who’s telling the story about what people in, what was the Benin Kingdom want? It’s people who are not there, is what you’re saying, which seems right to me, and I think that’s really interesting, right? That we in the West or some people in the West have created a moral and ethical imperative based on what is right for people living in these African countries, but it is not necessarily what the people living in these African countries say is important to them, and I’m not sure how we square that or how you think about that. Steve and I talked before on the podcast in cases where countries are very actively demanding works back, that there is a mismatch between historical origins of an object and its cultural significance at the time of creation and the modern nation-state that is now going to get it, right? Like our modern world, as shaped by nationalism and the governments that are in place today that might not have even been in place five years ago, are going to get these objects and own them and get to decide who can see them and how they’re used and how they’re going to be resourced. And it’s not clear that that’s how ownership works, even at an ethical level, right? That, you know, an object created thousands of years ago now belongs to the modern state of Italy, right? Or Egypt or Turkey. Like it just, I’m not sure there’s a real basis for that.
And it seems like maybe that’s the case- I mean, we know it’s the case, certainly, in Africa, just hasn’t been tested in the same way. I don’t know if you have thoughts about that. But you’re alluding to it, this idea that let’s say someone on the ground is asking for it back. Is it the government of Nigeria? Is it the current Oba, who is a monarch in an old form of government control? Who is the person, who is the entity that gets these objects back? And then is there a moral or ethical question about how those are used and who can see them and what people are represented by those objects?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Yeah, I was the one that first said that if a Benin art object goes back to the King of Benin and they put in their original context, nobody will have access to it. And a lot of our advocacy is to make sure that the object becomes accessible to a great number of people, because now these have become objects that people are writing dissertation out of, not one, not too a lot. So if we go back to that old style, it’s not going to work. And then if we go back and say we’re giving it back to Nigeria, a country that was formed in 1914, well are we doing the right thing? Let us assume that that present day political bureaucracy, Nigeria has a tiered system of government: the federal, the state, the local government, and then where the Oba belongs is the fourth tier, which is the traditional rulers’ council. That’s number four. But to show you how confused the whole polity is, the government of Muhammadu Buhari that left before this new guy came to power, wrote a gazette that gave the power to receive object coming from abroad to the Oba of Benin. No matter how you want to look at it, to me that was a political move, because the Oba of Benin aligned with the ruling party, and they also don’t like the state government. Who is supposed to be the rightful person receiving something on behalf of Benin City, because Benin City is under Edo State? But that never happened. Let us even assume that you ignore the state government. The local government authority, which is the Oredo where Benin City is situated, should have been responsible for that reception of object coming back, but they wanted to go back to Benin Kingdom.
A lot of my Nigerian colleagues, scholars like myself, they have actually lashed out at me that, why am I saying that it should be accessible to everybody? Very simple. Art is a universal language. It’s not made for just one person’s consumption. If the father of the current king was smart enough to know that and advocated for some of the looted objects to come back and not all, he was wise enough to know that. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in doing that. And then this has frustrated the idea of a very lofty museum project that was coming on. Because of this confusion, we now hear that the Oba wants to be the royal museum. Meanwhile, the state government is building the Museum of West African Art within Benin City.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right. They’re actively building it. Right.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: And the Palace of the King wants to be the royal museum. And you’re asking, what is the whole idea of that royal museum? It’s for nothing. It’s just purely politics. They want to see how much they can make out of it. Because the government, using an independent body, created the Legacy Restoration Trust to generate money to build that museum. What that chief told me, when money is involved, there’s going to be chaos. There’s going to be confusion. Because who will you leave that kind of money to? The Oba, when it started from the premise that the Legacy Trust has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars, why was he not told that nobody should collect money on behalf of the people? These are all confusions. It goes on and on and on, you know.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Endy, can I ask you, I’m playing devil’s advocate, because I think it’s important to tease out the various positions on this. So take that as you want. But if it’s important to you and it is important that these works be accessible to the public, what is the ethical or moral argument for removing them from the world’s big encyclopedic museums where arguably the most people in the world go and see them?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: One very important case scenario. In 2007, I was living in England at the time. Barbara Plankensteiner, who was the curator at the museum in Vienna in Austria at the time. Currently, she’s the director of the museum in Hamburg. She organized one of the most comprehensive exhibition of Benin art that has ever been done. The opening of that exhibition was in Austria. After Austria, the next venue became Berlin. After Berlin, the next venue became the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. After Paris, the exhibition crossed the Atlantic and came to Chicago. From Chicago, the exhibition went down and went back to Europe. Africa is there. No venue for them. And then me, I was living in England. I wasn’t given a visa to go see the exhibition in Vienna, in Austria, even though I lived in Europe, because I had a Nigerian passport at the time. Until I got to England, I never saw any of Benin artwork in the real physical form.I only read them in books. I saw the pictures in books. I never met them. Until I got to East Anglia- at the University of East Anglia the first time- that was when I saw some, and then I went to the British Museum. So a lot of folks will tell you that to even go and assess it, sometimes it’s difficult, because they cannot get a visa to go. So a lot of these have mounted in the past, which to a large extent is a very valid argument for why they needed to come back. When the Smithsonian took down all their Benin material, and said they were returning it. Of the 29, they have returned like 21. The remainder 8 is kept there in trust for the Benin people. I’ve also said that since Benin art was looted and sold around the world, the name of the art has never changed to European art. It has never changed to German art, never changed to American art. We still buy them from the auction market, we still buy them from art dealers, we still call them, we buy them as Benin art. It is still the property of the Benin people from any way you want to look at it. But all these things are attached to the personal ownership. If it goes back to the way it would have been owned, nobody will have access to that. Is that what we are pursuing?
Steve Schindler: Right.
Katie Wilson-Milne: I mean, that’s the question, right. I think sometimes these arguments, especially in the West, as you pointed out, are so black and white, and they’re being made by people who have no stake, and actually aren’t that interested in what people in origin countries really think, or if they care at all, if they’ve even heard of these objects. And so, I think that is really interesting that like are some people fighting for something that will result in nobody seeing them? You know, and is that better or worse?
Eden Burgess: So, Endy’s mention of the Smithsonian, of course, brings to mind this American group, and also Katie, your comments about who’s got the right to make these claims and where are these objects going to go. There was a lawsuit filed by the Restitution Study Group which purports to represent ancestors of slaves who were sold by the Oba to slave traders, you know, decades ago. So they do, Steve, as you mentioned, they did try to draw an analogy between Nazi-looting claims, particularly like gold teeth and things that were sort of reusable in some other form, like, you know, the Nazis also stole some church bells that they melted down into ammunition, so you know, things like that. Now, that was not a successful claim. The Supreme Court actually recently denied their petition for cert. They had already lost in DC and in the DC Circuit. So their argument is if Germany was forced to pay reparations for those kinds of losses, why shouldn’t the royal family of Nigeria? And there’s a lot of answers to that question. And frankly, the legal decisions were really more about what we would call technicalities. You know, what is the Smithsonian’s authority? What is the binding nature of their shared stewardship and ethical return policy and things of that nature? But that’s sort of an initial foray into that area. I don’t know if it was the best test case, considering the plaintiff was US based, but it certainly introduced a new idea to the conversation.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Yeah. And I think it’s not the legal claims weren’t great, but the Restitution Study Group is making a broader point that is not on people’s radar, which is that the powerful monarchies that remained in Africa profited from the slave trade, right? Like they were not enslaved. They remained there, because they made a lot of money selling people into slavery, their own people. And that wealth continues today, just like wealth begets wealth all over the world. And now, as Endy pointed out, in Nigeria, there’s a dispute between whether the government of Germany, France, and many other countries in Europe are going to be giving these objects back to the Oba or the government of Nigeria. And I think there’s a little bit of a standstill now with those efforts in Europe, because that became very unclear all of a sudden. And part of that is some ethical ambiguity about the party that should be receiving this stuff. So I think the restitution study group points are very interesting, even if the lawsuit itself is not the strongest.
Steve Schindler: Right, because I think on some level, there’s the ethical impetus here is that a lot of these objects, which came from current day Nigeria, should be able to be appreciated, seen, and have access to people living there. And to some extent, for all of those people who would like to have access to those, if it goes to the Oba, then the Oba can do whatever he wants with them, I think, and can sell them or just-
Katie Wilson-Milne: Keep them in the palace.
Steve Schindler: Keep them in the palace, and nobody can see them. And so, how does that advance any of those noble objectives?
Katie Wilson-Milne: But also, I mean, Endy, I’d love your thoughts on this, and you were starting to talk about it. It depends on what the objective of all this is. Is the point that it goes back to Africa, and as many African people who could claim some kind of ethical connection or cultural connection can see the work? Or is the point that there was a theft, and it gets returned to the owner? It’s not our business what they do with it, or how many people see it, or if they want to sell it and make money. That’s not the inquiry when something is stolen and you return it, right? We don’t ask that of the heirs of Nazi looting. That’s not our concern. It just depends on what the goal is here, and I think those are two really different goals, and they have very different answers.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Yeah, in the case of Benin City, I probably will make bold to say that there may be no goal. I think we are just trying to look at what we get out from, from the whole conversation going at the moment, it borders around what I can get, because the financial resources that has been generated so far, to constructing a museum that would have been housing the stuff. And then all of a sudden, the political move has drained that whole project, and has rendered it to almost nothing, because as we speak, even the museum now doesn’t even have any very straight goal from my own perspective, because it started out as a museum that will house all these objects, and all of a sudden, it has transformed to a museum of African art that is purely contemporary-based, and they went to England to pick a curator who is going to curate that museum. And she doesn’t, if you go to the Nigerian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, you see she’s curating contemporary things. In and of itself, that’s a huge problem, and it gets even more compounded.
I understand when people say, well, because it was looted, bring it back to who owns it and let them do whatever they want with it. But again, we are in a completely changed environment, and I understand the whole thing about museum being a Western invention. And that was why I started by saying that. Since the West has created this product, for people who they are selling the products to, we should do a little bit of PR, get the folks to understand how it works. That was why I started saying that the way that American institution will participate actively in this repatriation conversation is to create avenues for folks to come and study how the museum works, so that we can replicate that ideas over there. And then it will be useful to everybody. I usually start this particular premise with an experience I had that was very funny. You know, when I started my research in 2006, I’ve been to Benin City Museum for quite a number of times. I didn’t see anything. And then when I started getting frustrated, I was going to leave, and then a janitor came out and asked me, “do you need a map of ancient Benin?” Out of excitement, I said “yes, take me back there and let me go see.” And then all of a sudden he said, “no, it’s not in there, I have it at home.”
“I’m going to sell to you.”
Katie Wilson-Milne: Oh my God.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: So you will see how the people who are supposed to man those things, how they view them. They view them as probably an avenue to get that extra that they need to line their pockets. They don’t understand what it means. But in the West, this is a very important thing. And collecting and preserving cultures is very important, especially for generations to come. So if we are selling this product, we should be prepared to, you know, do that extra PR. Get folks, get them understand it, so that when these things come back, we will not be discussing whether it goes back to stay with the King of Benin. Even if he’s going to go into the museum, we understand how it will impact us culturally and even socially, as the case may be. But in a situation whereby that may not be possible, which is not the case, you see how we have been struggling to hear me talk from Nigeria as we speak. A different way of doing it is that rather than continuously make it very difficult for folks to be able to come and see shows made for Africa in the West, we should find ways to make that a possibility.
And one of those ways is to rather than exhibit around Europe and America, they should be bold enough to take venues in Africa. Me and my colleague Amanda Maples, the curator that took over from me in New Orleans, we have an exhibition that’s kicking off next year about masks and masquerade. We already have two secured venues in Africa, Senegal and Benin Republic. And we are looking for a third venue, potentially in Sierra Leone. So these are all ways that we are proactively making sure that this whole thing is a collective effort to make everybody enjoy the art. I still strongly feel that giving it to the King of Benin to go put back in his palace doesn’t serve any aim at all.
Katie Wilson-Milne: It’s a really interesting shift of conversation though. I mean, again, as you pointed out, we have one conversation happening in the West about what people somewhere else want and what’s good for them. And if the focus was less about ownership, right? And who gets to control it completely and more about making sure there’s access all over the world to all people. Like it would look really different. It would look like something that you’re planning right now, but that’s not the conversation that’s happening. So that’s a really interesting shift from what we’re seeing. And I don’t know if the political changes in Nigeria and the pause of repatriation from Europe because of that hopefully will cause a more flexible, insightful conversation about it or not.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: There potential it could be, the new guy that just took the helm of governorship of a federal state where Benin City is located, happens to be a political friend to the current Oba of Benin. So hopefully some positive news will begin to come out. We’ll just sit and watch. He was just sworn in just a few days ago, so something could happen.
Katie Wilson-Milne: I have one more question for you, Endy, and then we’ll see if Eden and Steve want to say anything before we wrap up. But my last question is just as you’re in your own job approaching repatriation issues, are you eager to, in the institution you work at or institutions you advise, are you eager to repatriate objects either in Nigeria or to the Oba or to other nations in Africa? Or are you thinking about the ethical approach to those objects differently?
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: When I resume working in Virginia, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art has just one Benin plaque. And I have received more than 20 interviews from various newspapers about returning them. And I tell them, no, I’m not returning it. You know, and they asked me why. I say, oh, because I will go back to that story that Oba Erediauwa gave in 1997. And I tell them that in my case, I’m not returning it doesn’t mean that I own it. It’s still for the Benin people, but I’m keeping it here on trust for them. I have only one. And it’s no crime if I exhibit that one. And that also gives me that impetus to want to, since that is my area of specialization, I would like to create for the institution a permanent gallery for the Benin collection that I’m looking, I’m still in negotiation to bring into the museum. Why I say this is because if you look at Benin at historical studies, a lot of what we know about Benin stopped right around 1897, which already creates the impression that Benin never created anything beyond 1897. That is a misrepresentation of history.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Actually, Benin, they kept on producing those things until today. So how do we correct that historical lacuna that has been created from 1897 until today about Benin artistic creativity? What this guy has is a combination of many things. Some were spillover from 1897. Some were created in the early 20s when the colonial administrators thought about reviving cultural practices that they deemed was dying out. And then some came in mid-century. So collecting those will help the institution create objects that show that chronology and prepare students who want to specialize in that field, so that we can really reconstruct Benin history and put it in its pride of place in African art study. To me, that is the only reason why I’m passionate about the material. And that’s why I feel those ones, those institutions that doesn’t have a lot of it. You know, if you go to the British Museum, for instance, you see plaques lined like in three or four columns, and they are all plaques everywhere. They have a lot of it. The VMFA, my situation, has was one. How do we compare? We do not compare at all. When I was in New Orleans, even, we had up to six Benin objects. I still advise New Orleans that they should not be in a hurry to return. But if the Benin people come and ask them, it’s not necessary, because when it goes back there, I know where they are going to put it: in the Palace of the King of Benin. That guy probably is not even interested in it.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right. And as you said, they’ve been making more ever since, right? These aren’t- it’s not viewed as a static thing.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Exactly. And Benin art is always in different auction markets in Europe until today.
Steve Schindler: Eden, is there anything that you wanted to say?
Eden Burgess: I’ll just mention one last thing. The Stanley Museum in Iowa, of all places, did repatriate a Benin bronze object to the Oba directly. And they are the first museum that has technically done that. It was, I think, after- because it was just the summer of this year. So it was after the government order that Endy mentioned that says that the Oba is the proper owner. And there’s some reporting in the press that even though objects might appear to be returned to the government, they eventually get passed to the Oba anyway. So Endy’s concern about, you know, I think the sharing of culture across all these museums is wonderful, but obviously there’s limitations to that. And if claims are made, we need to address them one at a time. But I do hope that the Nigerian government and the Oba will consider loans or making that accessible, particularly to its own people, to observe and to learn about and understand the context of their history.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Well, they are very open to loan. I know one of the one of the brothers of the Oba of Benin currently, who told me point blank that their royal collection is open for loaning and international collaborations.
Eden Burgess: That’s great.
Steve Schindler: Right. And I think that is such a departure from- Otherwise you could end up with the same situation as we’ve had with the Parthenon Marbles, where we started, where just each side digs in, there’s no compromise, and then the end result is that fewer people get to benefit from seeing these things.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Right. Thank you so much, Endy. Thank you, Eden. This was a really fabulous conversation.
Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Thank you, everybody.
Steve Schindler: And that’s it for today’s podcast. Please subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts, and send us feedback at podcast@schlaw.com. And if you like what you hear, give us a five-star rating. We are also featuring the original music of Chris Thompson, and finally, we want to thank our fabulous producer, Jackie Santos, for making us sound so good.
Katie Wilson-Milne: Until next time, I’m Katie Wilson-Milne.
Steve Schindler: And I’m Steve Schindler, bringing you The Art Law Podcast, a podcast exploring the places where art intersects with and interferes with the law.
Katie Wilson-Milne: The information provided in this podcast is not intended to be a source of legal advice. You should not consider the information provided to be an invitation for an attorney-client relationship, should not rely on the information as legal advice for any purpose, and should always seek the legal advice of competent counsel in the relevant jurisdiction.
Music by Chris Thompson. Produced by Jackie Santos.