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Videos: The history of looted Benin bronzes.

The Benin bronzes were looted from the kingdom of Benin in 1897. What happened to them after that?

Excerpts from ARM information sheet: According to Darshana Soni, from ARM a campaign group for the return of the Bronzes to thier rightful owners ”When the looted art treasures were brought back to England many of the military officers kept private collections of them, whilst the foreign office sold considerable quantities, much of which found it’s way to museums of Europe and America. The remarkable quality of the work was rapidly reflected in high auction room prices. The Foreign Office gave the British museum a huge quantity of Bronze wall plaques which depict the history of the Benin Empire in the 15th and 16th century. Many are displayed in the ethnographic section of the museum.

These Museums also retained selling rights of duplicates to the originals, which of course means that enormous profits have been made.

Great offence was caused when the British Museum and the British Government refused even the loan of a single ivory mask for a vast pan-African Arts festival in 1977.

The looting of artworks in the course of military conflict has been outlawed since the Napoleonic wars and the restitution of looted works within Europe enforced. Increasingly, the morality and legality of holding art collections seized by force is being questioned.

In the true sense of justice and selfdetermination, the Benin artefacts belong to the culture from where they were deprived from – they symbolise a historical and social significance which the aesthetic and monetary value they hold in exile would never compensate.

Click here to sign a petition to bring back these artefacts to thier legal owners.

The short videos below also give a sense of the history of Benin Bronzes.