The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence+Cultural Restitution

The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Paperback)
Dan Hicks (author)
 
New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020
'Essential' - Sunday Times
'Brilliantly enraged' - New York Review of Books
'A real game-changer'- Economist
 
Walk 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.

Number of pages: 368 
Weight: 342 g 
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 27 mm