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

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

Hardcover

Business GeneralGeneral ReferenceArchaeology

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ISBN10: 0745341764
ISBN13: 9780745341767
Publisher: Pluto Pr
Published: Nov 5 2020
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.35
Height: 1.30 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
Winner of the 2021 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award

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 decolonization 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 relate to the objects of empire we once took for granted.

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