The University of Iowa’s Stanley Museum of Art is the first North American museum to formally return the Benin Bronzes in its holdings directly to the current Oba, the ceremonial leader of the Edo people. Representatives from the institution met with Oba Ewuare II and officials of the Benin Royal Court earlier this month to officially restitute two artworks that have been in its collection since 1986 and 2001, respectively.
The objects, a wooden altarpiece and a brass plaque, were originally plundered from the Benin Kingdom during the British siege of 1897. The milestone event was commemorated in a ceremony in Benin City (situated in present-day Nigeria) on July 15.
In 2020, the Stanley Museum established a dedicated provenance research role to investigate its collection for looted objects. Subsequently, student researcher and museum staff member Mason Koelm identified the origins of the Benin Bronzes, and in 2022, the museum’s Collections Committee and Advisory Board voted to formally remove them from the institution’s holdings.
“The violence and loss associated with these objects can never be forgotten,” Curator of African art Cory Gundlach said in a press statement, emphasizing the institution’s commitment “to acknowledging this tragic chapter in history and using it as a catalyst for positive change.”
For decades, the Oba of Benin and Nigeria’s various governments have made numerous efforts to retrieve its lost cultural heritage with little success. Nearly 5,300 Benin bronzes are currently dispersed globally across the collections of 136 institutions; London’s British Museum notoriously holds the largest grouping with 944 objects, according to the Digital Benin online database, which also highlights other institutions including the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, Chicago’s Field Museum, and the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Part of the recent lag in restitution efforts has stemmed from lack of clarity over the rightful owner of the Benin Bronzes. In March 2023, Nigeria’s outgoing president Muhammadu Buhari transferred ownership of the bronzes to the Oba. Previously, museums in Europe and the United States’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Smithsonian Institution had been negotiating with the Nigerian government’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments to repatriate bronzes in their collections.
Stanley Museum Director Lauren Lessing told Hyperallergic that while US institutions and others around the world began repatriating the Benin objects to the Nigerian government, the Stanley Museum “chose a different route, and it proved to be the correct one.” She further credited Gundlach with the restitution decision, citing “his firm belief in December 2018 that the Oba’s claim to these objects would prevail.”
In terms of other restitution efforts, Lessing told Hyperallergic that provenance research and relationship building can be “slow and painstaking work” (especially with the museum’s small provenance research staff), but they are “committed to doing it transparently and establishing practices that other museums can follow.”
“I am very pleased to be working on this project with the Stanley Museum of Art,” said Prince Aghatise Erediauwa of the Benin Royal Court in a statement, adding that he hopes it “opens the door to many more restitutions from American museums directly to the Royal Court of Benin.”
