In 1897, following the violent invasion of the Kingdom of Benin by British troops, the Benin Bronzes, a collection of royal sculptures in bronze and other materials, were stolen and transported to London. The pieces were donated to museums (the British Museum still has an important collection), sold at auction or taken home by soldiers, where they began to decorate the living rooms. At least four artifacts, including two ivory leopards, were presented to Queen Victoria. Some of the objects ended up in other European countries, such as Germany and the United States of America, causing the dispersal of the important art collection, made up of more than three thousand artifacts. Benin City, now part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has been trying to recover the stolen property, but without much success. Most of the pieces remain abroad, including in Portugal, where there are several Benin Bronzes.
An important step forward in the mapping and preservation of bronzes was taken this November with the launch of Digital Benin, a digital platform that aims to bring together “objects, historical photographs and rich documentary material from collections around the world to provide an long-requested overview of royal artifacts from the Kingdom of Benin stolen in the late 19th century,” highlighting its importance as an expression of Benin art, culture, and history. Since most of the pieces are not located in Nigeria, the archive allows Nigerian researchers and other interested parties to access the collection and documentation without having to travel to the different institutions that house them.
The project was born thanks to an initial investment of 1.5 billion euros, provided by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting visual arts, which has meanwhile promised additional funding by 2023. The team of 14 international researchers , supported by five scientific advisers in Nigeria, Kenya and the United States, is led by Barbara Plankensteiner, Director of the Museum am Rothenbaum – World Cultures and Arts (MARKK) in Hamburg, which has 179 Benin Bronzes in its collection, and includes , among others, Kokunre Agbontaen-Eghafona, from the University of Benin; Felicity Bodenstein of the Sorbonne University; Jonathan Fine, director of the Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna; and Anne Luther from Philadelphia, an expert in digital humanities. The group was in charge of contacting the international collections and collecting and processing the information that was later made available on the platform.
The digital archive currently collects data referring to 5,246 works of art, in 131 institutions in 20 countries, 14 of which are European. Few of these pieces reached Europe before 1897. The British Museum, London, is the institution that, for historical reasons, has the largest collection of Benin Bronzes (944), followed by the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin (518). In Portugal, a piece was identified that is part of the collection of the National Museum of Ethnology, in Lisbon. There are others that were not classified by Digital Benin, including a commemorative head of Oba that was donated to the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa by the German ethnologist Max Shoeller, in 1899. Contacted by the Observer, the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa created in 1875, said he had not been contacted by Digital Benin to integrate the collection, without specifying, however, if he was aware of the project or if he tried to collaborate with the important database.
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Source: Observadora
