Brutish Museums
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A01=Dan Hicks
African Art
african stolen art
art repatriation
Author_Dan Hicks
Benin Court Art
Benin Dialogue 2 Group
Benin Punitive Expedition
books about stolen art
British colonialism
british museum
Category=ABC
Category=GLZ
Category=NHH
Category=NHHA
Category=NHTQ
Category=NK
Cecil Rhodes
colonial art
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eq_bestseller
eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
George Goldie
Humboldt Forum
looted colonial art
Macron Report
MC Hammer
Neil MacGregor
Niger Coast Protectorate
pan-Africanist thought
Pitt Rivers Museum
primitive art
Queen Victoria
repatriation of art
Royal Museum in Benin City
stolen art
stolen artifacts
stolen colonial art
United African Company
Product details
- ISBN 9780745341767
- Dimensions: 150 x 230mm
- Publication Date: 20 Aug 2020
- Publisher: Pluto Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 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 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.
Dan Hicks 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 is also a Non-Executive Director and Trustee of Museum of London Archaeology. He was awarded the 2017 Rivers Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute. He has published eight books including The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology (CUP, 2006).
