Description
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 objects of empire we once took for granted.
Author: Dan Hicks
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Published: 10/20/2021
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.10w x 1.20d
ISBN13: 9780745346229
ISBN10: 0745346227
BISAC Categories:
- Business & Economics | Museum Administration and Museology
- Social Science | Archaeology
- Business & Economics | Development | Economic Development
About the Author
Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum. His award-winning research focuses on the restitution of African cultural heritage from Euro-American collections.