num_pages: 320
description: 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 brass plaques and carved ivory tusks 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 Museums 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.
language: English
title: The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution
publisher: Pluto Press