Irish Museum Becomes Latest European Institution to Pledge to Return Looted Benin Bronzes

Irish Museum Becomes Latest European Institution to Pledge to Return Looted Benin Bronzes

Keeping in line with other European art institutions that have made a commitment towards the repatriation of the famous Benin Bronzes, the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) in Dublin has announced that it will be returning its collection of the historical Nigerian artifacts.

The Benin Bronzes were looted from the old Benin kingdom in the present-day Edo State of Nigeria in 1897 by colonial British troops and have since been scattered across museums and institutions in Europe and North America. According to reports, there are more than 90,000 objects from the Benin loot in Europe. The case of their repatriation to their original owners had been a longstanding debate in the art world, with strong arguments on either side of the restitution argument.  

However, recently, the moral argument for the restitution of these historical artifacts to their ancestral homes has taken precedence, and several European institutions have begun the process of repatriating the Benin Bronzes in their care. 

Scotland’s Aberdeen University was the first to make such commitment in March 2021 when it said it will return the lone sculpture of the head of an Oba of Benin in its possession “within weeks”. According to the university's account, a curator had bought the stolen cultural artifact for the university at an auction in 1957. The Church of England and Germany’s Humboldt Forum soon followed suit.

This week, the Church of England said it is “currently in discussions” about the return of two Benin Bronzes which were given as gifts to the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie almost 40 years ago.

A day after that announcement, the National Museum of Ireland has now committed to returning the twenty-one pieces of Benin artifacts in its chest to Nigeria. Although no official timeline has been submitted for the repatriation process, NMI officials acknowledged that the museum will make “restitution in full” in regard to the artifacts.

The artifacts, when returned, are intended to be stored at the planned Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) which is being built in Benin City. The museum, designed by David Adjaye, is expected to have climate control and storage systems synonymous with those of its Western counterparts and is slated to open in 2025. The purpose of the museum will be to specifically showcase the treasures of the ancient African empire of Benin and other historical African arts and crafts. 

As peer and activist pressure mounts on more institutions to return their share of the plundered Benin Bronzes, all eyes turn to London’s British Museum, which houses the largest collection of the looted African artifacts–more than one thousand of the stolen objects–and Paris’s Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, which has already pledged to repatriate twenty-six of its objects “within a year”.

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