Benin Bronzes: talks with the Nigerian delegation in Berlin
News from 07/08/2021
On July 7, the guests toured the Humboldt Forum and on the next day they visited the storage facility in Dahlem containing objects from Benin.
On a visit to Berlin, the Nigerian partners and Sir David Adjaye, the architect of the Edo State Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) being built in Benin City, visited the Humboldt Forum and inspected objects from Benin in the Dahlem storage facility of the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin).
SPK President Hermann Parzinger considers the visit a success: "Our declared goal is to return substantial numbers of objects from the historic Kingdom of Benin to Nigeria as early as 2022. We get closer to achieving that with every conversation that we have, which is why this visit to Berlin by our Nigerian partners was so important. We now need to keep up the pace of these talks so that objects currently kept in Berlin can be shown next year in the first phase of the EMOWAA, which will then have been completed."
Links for Additional Information
- Press Release (in German) „Gespräche zum Umgang mit Benin-Bronzen und zu einer Roadmap für geplante Rückgaben in 2022 fortgesetzt“ (08.07.2021)
- Images of the visit
- Parzinger on Discussions Regarding Benin Bronzes in Nigeria
- SPK Foundation Board: Benin Bronzes Return to Nigeria
- Everything at a Glance: The Ethnologiosches Museum’s Benin Collection Accessible Online
- Managing Non-European Objects
- Restitution and Other Solutions