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| His Royal Highness Professor Gregory I. Akenzua of Benin Kingdom and Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund during the opening. |
By Tajudeen Sowole
INCONSISTENCY in policies,
which keeps limiting the continent, seems to have aided the legitimacy claim of
Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, US over the controversial Benin cultural
objects.
Last year, the museum had received donation of 28 pieces of
art in bronzes and six ivories from an American, Mr. Robert Owen Lehman. The
donor, significantly, is the heir to the vast collection of a famous banker,
Phillip Lehman (1891-1969), who was one of the
early collectors of Benin art.
The collection has been traced to the looting that took
place when the British invaded old Benin Kingdom in 1897, which eventually led
to the sending of Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi
(1888 -1914) to exile in Calabar. An estimated 4,
000 cultural objects from the Benin palace were looted by the British military.
For MFA, which is one of many museums in the US and Europe
holding some of the Benin artefacts, it’s a priority to legitimise the
invaluable collection.
In getting legitimacy, the endorsement of Benin
natives was essential, particularly in managing public sentiment and
perception, so suggests the museum’s attitude after receiving the donations
last year.
A newspaper review on the controversial
donations, published by The Guardian
last year with heading Ahead of 2013 show
of looted Benin artefacts, museum plots legitimacy, had exposed MFA’s
tactics to blur the restitution question hanging over the acquisition of the
artefacts.
Two weeks ago, MFA’s plan was finally carried out as some
natives of Benin joined the museum in what was tagged, Celebration of Benin Kingdom Arts and Culture.
It was the opening of Benin Kingdom Gallery, a dedication
to the cultural objects of the people. The event, MFA said, was in
collaboration with a Boston-based group, Coalition of Committed Benin Community
Organisations.
Photographs from the event, which showed a high level
representative, also indicate an apparent contrast to the demand of the Benin
monarch for the restitution of the controversial artefacts.
The delegates included Ambassador Walter Carrington,
Chief Nicholas O. Obaseki of Benin Kingdom, His Royal Highness Professor
Gregory I, Akenzua of Benin Kingdom, Chief Esosa Eghobamien, The Obobaifo of
Benin Kingdom, Dr. Arese Carrington, and Director of MFA, Boston Malcolm
Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund.
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| The controversial artefacts on display inside the Benin Kingdom Gallery |
However, the monarch, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo,
Erediauwa’s spokesperson, Prince Edun Akenzua’s disclosure that the former did
not send any delegation, suggested lack of coherence and inconsistency on the
side of the Benin royal house. “The Oba did not
send any representative to the Boston museum event,”Akenzua stated few days
after the Benin Kingdom Gallery was opened.
But in MFA’s response to the post-event report, published in The Guardian of
Sunday, September 29, 2013, Akenzua’s claim that Oba did not send a delegation
was countered.
MFA’s Associate Director of Public Relations, Karen Frascona, sent a copy of the
letter credited to the Oba of Benin, but signed by Secretary to the Oba, O.
Oronsaye-Guobadia. The letter dated September 5, 2013 and addressed to the
director of the museum acknowledged the receipt of a letter from MFA dated August
13, 2013 and expressed “regret that the Omo N Oba will not be able to attend
the opening ceremony of the museum’s Benin Kingdom Gallery personally.”
The letter further states in part: ‘I am to further add that
the Coalition of Committed Benin Community
Organizations has been mandated to participate and
represent the Omo N Oba at the event.”
While the letter has clarified the
identity or background of the Coalition
of Committed Benin Community Organisations, and
explained the presence of highly placed individuals such as the Carringtons and the chiefs, it appears to have weighed heavily
against Akenzua’s claims that the Oba did not send a delegation.
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| Dance Member of Uyiedo Cultural Dance Troupe. And members of Coalition of Committed Benin Community Organizations during the opening of the Benin Kingdom Gallery in Boston, U.S. |
An observer, who chose to be anonymous,
said it’s worrisome that the Benin traditional ruling class could not take a
common stand on the issue. “The caliber of people at the event and the
supposedly denial of the Oba’s knowledge of the delegation’s presence is
untidy, worrisome.”
Describing the presence of Benin
community at the gallery’s opening as an ‘endorsement’ of MFA’s possession of
the cultural objects, he suspects that it could also strengthen the museum’s
claim of ‘legitimacy’.
Ahead
of the opening, MFA had indicated that the event was being organised in
collaboration with Coalition of Committed Benin Community Organisations.
That information was not in doubt, as pictures of the
event released by MFA suggest that the group dominated the festival-like celebration.
And when Akenzua described the controversial
representation of the Oba as ‘spurious’, he was
probably questioning the identity of the coalition, a group that has
suddenly appeared on the culture scene just in the last few weeks.
Frascona, via email sent few days ago, explained that
MFA began meeting with the group “in early June, inviting them to assist in
planning a celebration of the gallery opening at the Museum.”
She also
disclosed how Dr. Arese Carrington facilitated the permission of the Oba by
visiting the “palace in late August and hand-delivered the letter and message
from the MFA.”
Giving the
background of the group, Franscona stated that it “represents a number of
local-area Edo group, and had approximately 250 members of the community
attended the event.”
As controversial as the donation of the 32 artefacts is,
perhaps, Lehman Jnr should be commended for providing an opportunity for a
broader space to spread the appreciation of Benin art and culture.
Standing in the middle of the
crisis – while Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM)
keeps agitating for restitution – is MFA’s establishment of a Benin Kingdom
Gallery.
The temporary possession and the
creation of a gallery by the Boston museum is not exactly a bad idea, more so,
that it’s all about the ‘celebration of Benin art and culture’, a section of
art and culture practitioners in Nigeria, had argued.
MFA had disclosed that the collection ranged from sculptural
heads of kings and freestanding figures to pendants and high-relief plaques
that once adorned the walls of courtyards in the palace. Included in the gift from Mr. Lehman and
currently on display in
the new gallery, according to Frascona are two loans. There are 30 bronzes and six ivories on display in the
gallery.
Speaking on the issue, one of
the leading scholars on Benin art and culture, Dr. Peju Layiwola, disagreed.
She said the ‘celebration’ strikes a disturbing emotional chord, which opens a
wound created by the 1897 invasion of Benin.
She recalled the bloodshed
of the Benin Punitive Expedition of the British military and asked: “How does the celebration and fanfare over the opening
of the Benin Kingdom Gallery in Boston help to assuage the pains associated
with the killings of 1897?”
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Layiwola, who is of Creative Arts Department, University of
Lagos (UNILAG), noted that in spite of “incessant requests made by the Oba of
Benin and Prince Edun Akenzua asking for the return of the stolen Benin works,
the foreign museums have simply ignored these requests”.
Layiwola stressed that given the history of the Benin
collection in the possession of MFA, the opening of the gallery “certainly
cannot be a celebration for Nigeria or any Edo person”.
As complex as the issue of returning artefacts of proven
displacement are, a
Lagos-based leading collector of fine arts, Prince Yemisi Shylon, traced
Nigeria’s inability to achieve the ultimate goal of restitution to lack of
passion in the leadership of government.
Shyllon argued, “we have
not been seen as a people who demonstrate any seriousness at protecting our
collective patrimony and heritage”.
He cited the example of previous
Nigerian government that “signed off artefacts to the French government during
the Jacques Chirac-led administration”. He also recalled “a major traditional
art piece taken from National Museum, Onikan, Lagos as a gift to the Queen of
England during a state visit by one of our ex-head of states”.
Indeed, since the issue of restitution
came to fore over two decades ago, little or no efforts seemed to have come from
the government.
Hope, however, appeared on the horizon early this year when
the NCMM, for the first time, hosted selected foreign museums in Benin. It was
a process, which the Director-General of NCMM, Mallam Abdallah Yusuf Usman,
described as aiming to get vast cultural objects of Nigeria in foreign museums
returned to the country. The organisers
described the gathering as a follow-up to two earlier meetings on the subject,
held in Vienna, Austria in December 2010; as well as Berlin, Germany, October
2011.
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| Oba Ovomramwen (1888 -1914), on his way to exile in Calabar shortly after he was deposed by the British colonial masters in 1897. |
The forum, which had in attendance directors of selected
museums from Europe, produced a document known as Benin Plan of Action. Some of
the participants included Dr. Michael Barrett and Dr. Lotten
Gustafsson-Reinius representatives of the National Museum of Ethnography of the
Museums of World Culture Stockholm, Sweden Dipl. Ethn; Silvia Dolz of Museum
für Völkerkunde Dresden, Staatliche Ethnographische Sammlungen Sachsen of the
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany; Dr. Peter Junge represented Ethnologisches
Museum-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany; Dr. Barbara Plankensteiner
represented Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, Austria; and Dr. Annette
Schmidt of the National Museum of Ethnology of the Netherlands.
While the future looks better with the
NCMM s instigated Benin Plans of Action, the vacuum created by the inaction of
the past cannot remain unfilled. Such opening, perhaps, in the meantime may
just give museums like MFA and other holders of Nigeria’s invaluable cultural
objects to keep helping in ‘celebration’ of the people’s arts and culture.
“Under the current ambience, one
cannot blame MFA who appear to appreciate the value of these works better,”
Shyllon said.
He argued that if the “inheritors
of these great works of art are being lackadaisical about preservation; not
pursuing policies, strategies and programs to protect, appreciate and promote
the works, one is forced at times to wonder whether it is not better to instead
leave MFA to help protect the works from neglect, eventual, loss and
destruction by us as a people and nation”.
After news on MFA’s possession of the artefacts broke
last year, the Oba of Benin responded through a member of the Benin Royal
house, Chief Irabor Frank, who stated via email: “The Oba of Benin had said at
many forums that the looting of the Benin palace by the British government in
1897 was premeditated. The Oba had made his demand very clear that the stolen
Benin artefacts should be returned.”
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NIGERIAN LEADERSHIP MUST FOR ONCE SHOW DETERMINATION AND RESOLVE IN CULTURAL MATTERS AND DEMAND THE RETURN OF THE ILLEGALLY HELD ARTEFACTS IN THE WESTERN MUSEUMS. NIGERIA AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE MUST BE IN CONTROL OF ITS CULTURAL ARTEFACTS AND STOP PLAYING SECOND FIDDLE.
ReplyDeleteKWAME OPOKU