Museums in Europe and North America are critically examining the dark colonial history of some of the African art objects in their possession and while some have put plans in place for the repatriation of these wrongly acquired art pieces, others still mull over the idea. One museum that is putting action to the idea is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York which has decided to return two pieces of Benin Bronzes and one piece of Ife art in its collection to Nigeria.

On Wednesday, June 9, The Met announced in a statement that it was "pleased to have initiated the return of these works and is committed to transparency and the responsible collecting of cultural property."

The objects in question consist of two 16th century brass plaques from its Benin Bronzes collection and a brass head produced in the city of Ife around the 14th century. 

The two brass plaques, “Warrior Chief” and “Junior Court Official,” were created at the Court of the Oba (King) of Benin and are part of the 1894 loot by British troops when they invaded the former African empire located in present-day Southern Nigeria.

The plaques had formerly being housed at the British Museum and around 1950 or 1951, the London institution transferred them with 24 other items to the National Museum in Lagos, from where they strangely surfaced on the international art market "at an unknown date and under unclear circumstances" according to the Met museum. They were acquired by a New York collector, the art dealer Klaus Perls and his wife Dolly, who eventually donated them to the Met in 1991, along with 151 other pieces of African royal artifacts that included brass figures, carved elephant ivory, masks, jewelry, and musical instruments.

Explaining his decision to the New York Times in 1991, Klaus Perls said: "I started buying African art simply because I liked to see it together with the works of the Picasso generation of artists in which I specialized as a dealer. Soon, however, my predilection for Benin art asserted itself, and it became the only kind of African art I continued to buy, until, quite unnoticed, it developed into a collection."

The third artifact, the 14th-century "Ife Head", was recently offered to the museum for purchase by another collector whom the Met declined to identify. According to an account by CNN, the Ife artwork originally came from the Wunmonije Compound near the royal palace in Ife. In 1938, a cache of realistically carved portrait heads created by the Yoruba people was discovered in a construction project at the site, and while most went to the National Museum of Ife, several were taken out of the country, leading the Nigerian government to more tightly control the export of antiquities.

The museum decided to return the works after conducting research in collaboration with the British Museum, with input from the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM).

The Met narrated that the individual who offered the Ife head "had been under the misapprehension that legal title to the work had been granted by the NCMM," however, Inquiries made by the museum proved otherwise, so the Met "arranged with the seller and their agent for the 'Ife Head' to return to its rightful home."

"We welcome the rapprochement developing in the museum world, and appreciate the sense of justice displayed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art," said Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Nigeria's minister of information and culture, in a statement. "Nigeria enjoins other museums to take a cue from this. The art world can be a better place if every possessor of cultural artifacts considers the rights and feelings of the dispossessed."

The Met still has some 160 items from Benin City, including a renowned ivory mask, in its collection, which were “were largely given to the institution in the 1970s and 1990s by individuals who acquired them on the art market,” a spokesperson for the Met told the New York Times.

These items when repatriated to Nigeria will be stored at the planned Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City, Nigeria, which is being designed by renowned architect David Adja

Authentic African art pieces with accompanying certificates from their creators are available for procurement on Aworanka, the leading website aggregator for African art galleries and African artists.