The return of the Benin bronzes begins
Press release from 12/16/2022
Ten Benin objects from the Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage will be physically restituted to Nigeria in a few days. They are among the 514 Benin objects for which the SPK already transferred ownership to Nigeria in the summer.
On 25 August 2022, Hermann Parzinger, President of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK), and Abba Isa Tijani, Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), signed the agreement on the transfer of ownership of 512 Benin objects. Two further objects had already been handed over in July 2022 as part of the signing of a joint declaration between Germany and Nigeria at the Federal Foreign Office. The agreement with the SPK also includes a 10-year loan of around a third of the collection restituted in August to the Ethnological Museum.
"The restitution of all 514 Benin bronzes from Berlin to Nigeria is a model case and so far unique in its scope. The new owners will tell us when they want which objects back. They determine the rhythm. We are delighted that the first pieces can now be physically returned - including a throne seat, which of course has a very special symbolic significance," says Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.