The Brutish Museums (eBook)

The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution

Dan Hicks (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020
Pluto Press (Verlag)
978-1-78680-684-0 (ISBN)

Infos

A call for western museums to wash their hands of colonial blood

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New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020'Essential' Sunday Times'Brilliantly enraged' - New York Review of Books'A real game-changer' EconomistWalk into any Western 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 Brutish Museums sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. Since its first publication, museums across the western world have begun to return their Bronzes to Nigeria, heralding a new era in the way we understand the collections of empire we once took for granted.

Autor

lt;p>Dan Hicks FSA is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He was awarded the 2017 Rivers Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute, and was Visiting Professorat the musée du quai Branly Jacques-Chirac in Paris in 2017-18. Dan has published eight books including The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology (CUP, 2006).

Inhalt

Preface

1. The Gun That Shoots Twice

2. A Theory of Taking

3. Necrography

4. White Projection

5. World War Zero

6. Corporate-Militarist Colonialism

7. War on Terror

8. The Benin-Niger-Soudan Expedition

9. The Sacking of Benin City

10. Democide

11. Iconoclasm

12. Looting

13. Necrography

14. ‘The Museum of Weapons, etc

15. Chronopolitics

16. A Declaration of War

17. A Negative Moment

18. Ten Thousand Unfinished Events

Afterword: A Decade of Returns

Appendix One: Provisional List of the Worldwide Locations Of Benin Plaques Looted in 1897

Appendix Two: Sources of Benin Objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (the ‘first collection’

Appendix Three: Sources of Benin Objects in the former Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham (‘the second collection’)

Appendix Four: Current Location of Benin Objects previously in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Farnham (the ‘Second Collection’)

Appendix Five: A Provisional List of Museums, Galleries and Collections that May Currently Hold Objects Looted from Benin City in 1897.

References

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.11.2020
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Buchhandel / Bibliothekswesen
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• Schlagworte: African Art • Benin Court Art • Benin Dialogue 2 Group • Benin Punitive Expedition • British colonialism • Cecil Rhodes • colonial art • George Goldie • Humboldt Forum • Macron Report • Neil MacGregor • Niger Coast Protectorate • pan-Africanist thought • Pitt Rivers Museum • Primitive art • Queen Victoria • Royal Museum in Benin City • United African Company
• ISBN-10: 1-78680-684-3 / 1786806843
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78680-684-0 / 9781786806840