How Benin bronzes were replaced by clay replicas

The new Museum of West African Art was supposed to house a public display of looted colonial artefacts. What went wrong?

- By Philip Oltermann BERLIN and Eromo Egbejule ABIDJAN

In a corner of the new Museum of West African Art (Mowaa), visitors can marvel at a sample display of the cultural treasures that adorned the royal palace that once stood in its place: a proud cockerel, a plaque with three mighty warriors, a bust of a king with a glorious beaded collar.

The artefacts, known as the Benin bronzes, were looted by British colonial forces in 1897. In the decades that followed they were scattered across collections in Europe and America.

Their return and public display inside the $25m state-of-the-art museum in the city of Benin in Nigeria’s Edo state, co-funded by European governments and western enterprises, was to be the crowning moment of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa’s stolen art.

Yet when Mowaa opens its doors on 11 November, the only Benin bronzes on display will be replicas made of clay, part of a pyramid-shaped installation by contemporary artist Yinka Shonibare - a far cry from the “most comprehensive display [of Benin bronzes] in the world” touted by authorities when plans for the museum to become their home were announced in 2020.

About 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the past five years, some on the initiative of private collections and some as acts of state by Germany and the Netherlands. For now, none are on public display.

If the looting of the original bronzes took place in the context of what has been called the “scramble for Africa”, as European nations raced to claim overseas territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, restitution has in part resembled a scramble in reverse. Western actors tried to outbid each other to atone for their past, before authorities in Nigeria had settled old rivalries about what restitution precisely entailed.