CFP: Critical Encounters: A Graduate Student Symposium in Honor of Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Critical Encounters: A Graduate Student Symposium in Honor of Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, Art History Department, and Institute for African Studies announce a graduate student symposium in honor of Sidney Littefield Kasfir.

Keynote address

Friday, April 22, 2011

7:30 pm

Chika Okeke-Agulu, Assistant Professor of Art History, Princeton University is a curator, artist and art historian and co-author of Contemporary African Art Since 1980, will deliver the keynote address.

Graduate Symposium

Saturday, April 23, 2011

9:30 am – 5:30 pm

“If tourist art, the lowest common denominator of what is thought by Westerners to be inauthentic in African art, can be deconstructed in ways that make the definition of authenticity full of self-contradictions, then the same kinds of questions can be asked even more readily about other non-canonical categories such as “elite” or “international” art. Now, in the closing years of the twentieth century, it is perhaps time to bring the canon into better alignment with the corpus, with what African artists actually make, and to leave behind a rather myopic classificatory system based so heavily on an Africa of the mind”

— Sidney L. Kasfir, “African Art and Authenticity: A Text with a Shadow” in African Arts

Throughout her career Dr. Sidney L. Kasfir has sought to rethink the way scholars, artists, museums, and viewers understand and categorize African art. She has attempted to expand our classificatory system, without allowing generalizations to dilute the complex efforts of artists, cultures, and visual languages. This symposium, organized in honor of her retirement from Emory University, considers three themes to which Dr. Kasfir has contributed: Commodification and Tourism; Heritage; and The Artist, the Workshop, and Cultural Brokerage.

Proposals should consider one of these three major themes. Papers should be twenty minutes in length. We welcome submissions from graduate students from any discipline and at all stages of their studies working with visual culture in Africa. Airfare and accommodations will be provided for students whose papers are accepted.

Deadline for submissions: Please send your cv and a one-page abstract by mail or email no later than February 5, 2011 to:

Elizabeth Hornor

Marguerite Colville Ingram Director of Education

Michael C. Carlos Museum

571 South Kilgo Circle

Atlanta, GA 30322

Ehornor [at] emory.edu

Selected speakers will be notified by email by March 5, 2011.

John Picton on Restitution of Benin Artefacts: Compromise, Negotiate, Support

Compromise, negotiate, support

Suppose that a secure display facility were to be built in Benin City that conformed to modern international standards of conservation and climatic control: the moral case would then be very hard to ignore

By John Picton, published online 24 Jan 11

In 1897 Benin City, to the west of the lower Niger in what is now Nigeria (and distinct from the modern country of Benin, formerly Dahomey), was invaded by British military and naval forces in retaliation for the killing of British personnel by rebel chiefs in the area. The royal palace and much of the city was destroyed, the king was sent into exile, returning to Benin only in 1914 for his burial, and several thousand works of art in cast brass, sculpted ivory and wood, wrought iron, coral beadwork, woven textiles and other fabrics, and other materials, were looted by the British personnel. No plan of the palace was made, and no record of the distribution of its artworks. It was a process of both folly and vandalism legitimated only by the status of the officers who, of course, bagged all the best material.

Almost immediately this art began to be disposed of in London salerooms, the ethnographic museum in Berlin quickly acquiring what remains the finest and most comprehensive collection of Benin art amongst all the museums of the world. Once the British Museum had woken up to what was happening it secured a collection of 16th-century brass plaques, and in the years that followed began to put together what is now the second-best collection of Benin art; and as material continued to appear in the salerooms of London almost every museum in Europe and America with any claim to collections of international status was able to acquire Benin material. Moreover, in the late 1940s and through the 1950s, collaboration between the Nigerian colonial government and its Department of Antiquities, and British Museum personnel, the Nigerian Museum, Lagos, was able to acquire what is the third-best collection of Benin art. Meanwhile, in Benin City itself a small museum was founded to house the few objects that had missed the hands of the marauding British in 1897.

Upon his succession to the throne, in 1914, the new king, Eweka II, set about the wholesale reinvention of Benin City, reviving its ritual and ceremonial culture, making the best of such political authority as the colonial overlords would allow within their policy of government by indirect rule, and commissioning the writing of an authorised history of the city, kingdom and empire, by a local chief. Eweka also commissioned new works of art, setting up altars dedicated to his father and grandfather, and their predecessors: the artists, after all, had not been exiled nor their skills somehow taken from them. It was altogether the greatest and most successful of all anti-colonial projects in sub-Saharan Africa; and in Benin City today the king retains his authority (even the public display of a photograph of the king must be authorised by the palace, its secret police keeping a very close eye on things). Moreover, throughout Benin history the prestige of kingship has depended, at least in part, on the king’s ability to command the work of artists and direct innovation in Benin visual culture. The prestige of kingship and the ownership of works of art are indeed so intertwined that it should come as no surprise that there is a hunger in Benin City for the return of the material looted in 1897.

Yet there has been no formal request by a competent authority for repatriation and no attempt at diplomatic negotiation or, even, litigation. Indeed, it would be a complex exercise given the distribution of Benin art through almost every city and museum of Europe and America, where it takes its rightful place alongside the art of every continent and civilisation in world history thereby demolishing the once-fashionable attribution (in Europe) of “primitivism” to African art and civilisation. The moral argument in favour of Benin City remains nevertheless, not least because the looting of its art is not in dispute, which suggests that some kind of compromise ought to be possible. Here are some suggestions: the recognition by the museums of Europe and America that they do not have unproblematic ownership rights to this material—some recognition, indeed, that the king of Benin might have a case; the loan of material from reserve collections for display in Benin City, whether of a temporary or permanent basis; traveling exhibitions in which some of the great museums—the British Museum, The Museum of Ethnography at Berlin’s Dahlem complex, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example—might collaborate so that Nigerians get to see this material in Nigeria. The problem here, of course, is that adequate facilities of international standard do not exist in Nigeria. But suppose that a secure display facility were to be built in Benin City that conformed to modern international standards of conservation and climatic control: the moral case would then be very hard to ignore.

These considerations have arisen in recent weeks because of the proposed sale at Sotheby’s of an ivory mask carved around or soon after 1500. It is a costume ornament worn by the king, one of five known of this type: one in the British Museum, one in the New York Met; one in Seattle, and one in Stuttgart. It had been acquired by Sir Henry Galway (or Gallwey, 1859-1949), as Deputy Commissioner and Vice Consul of the Niger Coast Protectorate, and responsible for sending the king into exile; and the mask had remained with the Galway family since his death. The proposed sale would certainly have created a new record for the value of a work of African art, but the mask was withdrawn from sale, possibly because of the volume of protest coming from supporters of repatriation. Its present whereabouts and future are currently unknown. One imagines a private sale will be negotiated for a sum far less than that anticipated by public auction, and as the purchaser will prefer to avoid the attention of the repatriation lobby the mask will effectively be lost to public view for a generation. This is surely an outcome to no-one’s advantage.

John Picton is Emeritus Professor of African Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Animated Political Commentary from Nigeria

Social networking sites, bless them. Bino and Fino today linked to these videos on Facebook. You will have to agree with us that these are beautiful examples of animation coming out of Nigeria as well as of this particular kind of Nigerian humour I admire. So let's hope we will see more from the artist/producer of these videos! You can find their Youtube channel here.

AS Judd (1917) on African Sight

As I wrote yesterday, I have been flicking through Brian Larkin’s Signal and Noise again. If you have any interest in how images, films in particular, are ‘read’ across cultures you may already have come across the John Wilson’s account of the chicken in the margins of William Seller’s educational film on the tropical hookworm (which you can watch here). Burns (2002: 200) quotes John Wilson:

‘This man – this sanitary inspector [William Sellers] – made a moving picture in very slow time, very slow technique of what would be required of the ordinary household in a primitive African village in getting rid of standing water – draining pools, picking up all empty tins and putting them away, and so forth. We showed this film to an audience and asked them what they had seen, and they said they had seen a chicken, a fowl and we didn’t know there was a fowl in it. So we very carefully scanned the frames, one by one for this fowl and, sure enough, for about a second, a fowl went over the corner of the frame.’[1]

The reaction of Wilson’s Nigerian audiences to this film has been quoted repeatedly to illustrate arguments that seeing is culturally conditioned: We do not simply see. We do learn how to see as we are socialised into our societies.[2] This, however, was not quite how Seller’s interpreted the reactions of his Nigerian audiences. Burns (2002: 198) explains that Sellers had ‘originally begun teaching health lessons with a magic lantern but had decided that his audiences were incapably of recognising two-dimensional pictures.’ He quotes him:

‘It is well known that if an illiterate African is handed a photograph of himself or some scene to him he will invariably turn it to the wrong way up in an effort to focus his eyes on the picture.’

Seller’s eventually concluded that local audiences comprehended motions pictures more easily than still pictures. They, however, could not ‘impose any logic on them.’ Burns (2002: 198) quotes him explaining:

‘They looked upon the films as a collection of animated photographs a few of which they could appreciate, but they were quite unable to link the scenes together to form any kind of story. … if films were to be successful in conveying a story or teaching a lesson to these people they would have to be specially made …’

Burns discusses the particular filming techniques Sellers suggested in more detail in Watching Africans Watch Films (2002) as well as in Flickering Shadows (2002).

This all serves as a rather extended introduction to a quote I stumbled across yesterday evening (yes, a lot of stumbling recently in my research) and want to share with you: AS Judd’s (1917) account of African and European sight published in ‘Native Education in the Northern Provinces of Nigeria.’ (Journal of the African Society. Vol. XVII. No. LXV).

If we compare the sight, for instance, of an African boy with that of the average European, we find that the African has developed a keenness especially in detecting moving objects, such as the movements of game. Movement arrests his eye as it does not the eye of a European. The European tries to discern the form or the shape of the object looked for and not so much the movement, and hence does not detect so quickly. Pictorial representation may convey much to the European mind, but to the primitive pagan pictures of the most familiar objects are not quickly understood. Especially is this true of landscapes, the perspective as shown in Western art is not comprehended by the untrained mind, the colour only is seen by the eye. A stereoscopic slide is more readily understood. (Judd 1917: 8)

Note that Judd, who apparently was based in what was then Nassarawa Province, distinguished between ‘pagan’ populations and Muslims.

It is obvious that the Moslem would have very little place for pictorial art in his social system, part from the decorations of his house, his household utensils, or his clothing. (Judd 1917: 3)

The effect of the unconscious training of the eye is seen in the relative time it takes for a Moslem as compared with a pagan boy to learn printed characters. The Moslem, although perhaps unable to read the Arabic Character, has some idea of the form of letters from often seeing them, and when he is introduced to the Roman character he sees a difference in the shape of the black marks before him, and my experience has been that he more quickly learns the alphabet than does the pagan. (Judd 1917: 7-8)

Here, Judd’s assessment, of course, reflected wider colonial discourses that at least in Nigeria considered local Muslim polities as more civilised (though still not as civilised as Victorian England) than non-Muslim societies.

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[1] If I’m not mistaken, this is from an interview with Wilson published in as ‘Film Literacy in Africa’ in the journal Canadian Communications (vol.1(4) summer, 1961, 7-14) Wilson is quoted more extensively by Marshall McLuhan (1962: 36-37) in The Gutenberg Galaxy.

[2] One discussion I particularly enjoyed – and, yes, it quotes Wilson as well – is Kulick & Willson’s (1994): ‘Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day’ published in the Visual Anthropology Review (Vol. 10(2). 1-13). The article has also been reproduced in Askew & Wilk (2002), ed.: The Anthropology of Media: A Reader.

Giant in the Sun - Colonial Film Unit (CFU) Clips at Website of the British Film Institute

I have been flicking through Brian Larkin’s Signal and Noise again. And then I went online and found that some films by the Colonial Film Unit are available online via the British Film Institute. Watch Giant in the Sun, a ‘study of Northern Nigeria as it prepares for self-government’:

The commentator introduces Africa as the 'continent of the future' before he outlines, through a map, the different regions of Nigeria. First, the film highlights the continuing traditions of Northern Nigeria. Men travel on camels, while at the market a snake charmer performs while women cook food. 'Old native hand industries are very much in evidence', most notably in the production of jewellery and glass. At the industries in Bida, the commentator explains how the region's government is 'reconciling' modern production methods with traditional skills. In particular, the film shows the training centres established by the government, for example at Abuja, where preference is given to 'traditional native potters'.

Further traditional industries are represented by the dye pits of Kano, and weaving. This is followed by footage of a big new textile plant 'established by the Northern region development corporation together with a famous British firm'. The commentator notes that 'the workers are nearly all Nigerian', and this is also the case at the canvas and rubber shoe factory in Kano, which uses 'homegrown rubber from Western Nigeria'. Next the film shows the manufacture of tinned food and bottles, highlighting how 'mechanised industry is more and more becoming a part of modern industrialised Nigeria'. Sweets and cosmetics are also produced, yet nuts remain the single biggest industry. After further shots of industrial production, the commentator emphasises the continuing importance of agriculture, through shots of the Fulani tribe.

The film next highlights the efforts of the government in controlling disease and in improving health care. An African doctor administers medicine while a local nurse looks after a baby. This leads to a section on education, showing the efforts made for both Muslim and Christian children. Scenes from a higher education college follow, followed by footage of 'mock meetings' conducted by the Institute of Administration in order to train members of district and village councils. It attempts here to explain how government works, showing the district council in operation. This is followed by scenes of dancing, music and sport. It concludes with a 'Sallah' - a traditional festival and celebration - and a regatta. Finally, a compilation of scenes reinforces the film's messages. 'The foundations have been well laid by other older hands. The people of Northern Nigeria face the future with confidence, knowing that with the natural resources of the land and by their own efforts they can justify the proud title of Giant in the Sun'.

Find it here (sorry, there doesn’t seem to be any means of embedding the clip) and more films can be found here.

Its propaganda, of course, and should be watched as such but can anybody identify in more detail these images (posters? wall hangings? printed cloth?) at the walls of the glass workshop in Bida?

Video Recording of 'Curating in Africa' (21 October 2010, Tate Modern, London)

I just received the news that the video recordings of October 2010’s symposium Curating in Africa at Tate Modern are now available at the institution’s video channel (four parts). Enjoy.

On a different note, this video of Christopher Ofili may be of interest to some of you.

On a Different Note: The Young Ambassadors for Community Peace and Interfaith Foundation, Jos

I try, sometimes more successfully than at others, to keep politics of this blog. Well, other than those directly affecting the arts and cultures. However, after a holiday period spent half following the latest developments of Sotheby’s plans to auction artefacts removed from Benin in 1897 – the part that prominently made it onto this blog – and half latest developments first in Jos and Maiduguri, then in Bayelsa and Abuja,[1] I find it very appropriate to link you the blog of this Jos-based organisation: The Young Ambassadors for Community Peace and Interfaith Foundation.

Young Ambassadors for Community Peace and Interfaith Foundation (YACPIF) is an NGO based in Jos, Nigeria whose mission is to prevent conflict and achieve and sustain peace through a community approach. YACPIF utilizes interesting and engaging activities such as rallies and sports to bring rival armed groups together to create and build lasting relationships. YACPIF registers young people between the ages of 14 to 40 who will stand for peace in a conflicted community as ambassadors of peace.

There are also a Facebook Group you can join and a Facebook fan site to get involved and/or receive updates about latest events.

This to me sounds like a very common sense approach to conflict prevention – and, maybe, there is a place for visual artists and the arts in this as well. As the recent report by the International Crisis Group on the historical and contemporary background to violence in northern Nigeria noted (the news coming out of Nigeria made that feel like appropriate holiday reading):

[Recent violent conflicts] are the product of several complex and inter-locking factors, including a volatile mix of historical grievances, political manipulation and ethnic and religious rivalries. However, the region has historically shown much capacity for peaceful coexistence between its ethnic and religious communities. Local conflicts are sometimes taken to represent the whole of northern Nigerian society, particularly by outside observers, which is far from the case. Traditions of peaceful coexistence show that conflict is not inevitable, and the right mix of social and political measures can alleviate the risks.

And, there seem to be indications that YACPIF’s peace ambassadors were already able to prevent further violence in Jos:

Gada Biyu/Kabong. In the first week of December 2010, Augustine Davou participated in the YACPIF Peace Cup Camp in Jos North. YACPIF has not been able to directly contact Augustine since then, but the following report has come from the Hausa Muslim community in the Gada Biyu area.

After they saw the dead bodies from the bomb blasts, the Christian youths were gathered to retaliate on the local Hausa Muslim community. The youths had started moving toward the Hausa community, but Augustine intervened to stop them from violence. Many of the youths said that they would not agree to put down their arms, but Augustine was a different voice, saying that they should not take the law into their own hands. By speaking peace, he was able to calm the Christian youths.

Angwan Rukuba. Luka Sambo has been involved with YACPIF from its inception. He mobilized the Christian youths from Jos North to attend the first peace rally in Kwararafa. Later, Luka helped to organize another peace rally in the Nasarawa area.

On Christmas Day, youth began demonstrating in Angwan Rukuba after the bomb blasts. Luka went to the site of the demonstration and reasoned with the angry Christian youths, telling them that it was not right for them to react by burning Muslim houses. At one point in his appeal for peace, some of the youth tried to beat him off, but security forces intervened. Eventually, most of the youths in Angwan Rukuba agreed to stop the violence and the demonstration was disbanded.

Bukuru/Gyel. The fighting between the Bukuru and Gyel communities was the most severe in the January 2010 crisis. Magaji Sule was one of the Muslim leaders of the fighting in this area. Two months later, tension began mounting between these communities and it appeared that a fresh crisis would start within hours. However, Rev. Pam was able to convince Magaji and the Christian youth leader to prevent the developing crisis by demanding that their youths put down their arms. Recognized a few weeks later as the first Peace Ambassador at the YACPIF Peace Rally in Bukuru, Magaji has continued to be a strong advocate for peace.

On Christmas Day after the bombings, Magaji helped to call together the Gyel and Bukuru communities to sign a peace agreement. Magaji describes the incident in these words, “When this thing happened, we called all our boys in the neighborhood, our parents, the youth and seniors, all of them. We said, Christians and Muslims, we must unite. We shouldn’t start fighting again. What happened there [where the bombs went off], Allah ya kiyaye. Here, we must stay in peace. We all sat together and decided for peace, and up until this time we haven’t had any problem.”

I should add that I’m grateful to Carmen for making me aware of the Young Ambassadors for Community Peace and Interfaith Foundation, Jos (also see her latest column in the Weekly Trust).

So, on that note: I wish you all a peaceful 2011 and hope that initiatives such as this one not only successfully continue their important work but will also inspire similar projects elsewhere.

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[1] … and then waking up the next morning, New Year’s Day, to the street in front of the estate on which I live cordoned off by police because a young man had been shot earlier in the morning and was in hospital in critical conditions …

Update V: On the Now-Cancelled Sale of a Benin Ivory Pendant Mask at Sotheby's

I suspect people are tired of hearing of the ‘Sotheby’s and the Benin Ivory pendant mask’ saga. Nevertheless, this is worth a quick mention here:

The case has finally made it into the international mainstream media! Yesterday, the UK’s Independent published an article which today has been quoted in the New York Times.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Tribune reports that

There are strong indications that the Federal Government might have waded into the controversy surrounding the plan by Sotheby’s to auction some prized Benin artefacts, including a pendant mask of Queen Idia, that were stolen from the kingdom by British colonial officers.

The paper also suggests that

But, according to a source in the presidency, President Goodluck Jonathan had taken an interest in the matter. The president was said to have been following the development and had already initiated moves to get the stolen artefacts returned to the country. The source disclosed that President Jonathan had given instructions to the effect that no effort should be spared to get the Benin arts, as well as other such artefacts that symbolised the pride of Nigerians and their rich cultural heritage. The president also ordered that machinery should be set in motion to get the artefacts repatriated into the country.

Efforts by Nigerian government officials are only briefly mentioned in the article in the Independent when it quotes Orobosa Omo-Ojo, the Special Adviser to the Edo State Government on Arts, Culture and Tourism stating that

They [Sotheby’s and/or the Galway’s, I assume] should seek good counsel and refrain from selling the mask … Anything that makes them ignore this call [from] the Edo state government will [make us] use this as a starting point to protect our intellectual properties.

Beyond that, however, both the Independent article as well as the New York Times emphasised the activities of expatriate groups, in particular the Nigeria Liberty Forum, and informal social media alliances.

Probably as a result of the Christmas period, responses by academics continued to arrive in my inbox after Sotheby’s had already cancelled the sale. Most significantly for wider debates about repatriation, Peju Layiwola directly answered questions about the legitimate ownership of the artefacts removed from the palace in Benin in 1897 as well as arguments that throw into doubt the safety of these items if they were returned to Nigeria.

There is no contention between the Nigerian State and the Benin royal family over rights of ownership for Benin artefacts. Indeed, requests have been made by both the Nigerian state and the Benin royal family for the return of the looted works. … It may interest readers to know that when a few items of Oba Ovoramwen’s regalia, found in Britain, were returned in 1938, they were given directly to the reigning king, Oba Akenzua II. These artefacts did not find their way back to Europe or elsewhere, but were assimilated into the sartorial traditions of the palace. This underscores the importance of Benin cultural items as part of an existing culture.

On a completely different note – and I was trying to stay away from non-art related politics and news on this blog – but: those of you, who are praying, pray for a peaceful 2011 in Nigeria.

Update IV: On the Now-Cancelled Sale of a Benin Ivory Pendant Mask at Sotheby's

Okay, a final quick update: At Aacronym Ogbechi has just responded to some of the post on H-Net. Sadly he somewhat shares my lack of enthusiasm for Sotheby’s statement arguing that

… the statement suggests that the consignees withdrew the artwork, which to me suggests that Sotheby’s itself is not necessarily concerned about its criminal involvement in the trafficking of stolen cultural patrimony. Would they have gone ahead with the sale if the consignees decided to brazen it out?

He finds some reason for optimism though:

In that regard, it seems the massive public outrage of Nigerians and other supporters succeeded in preventing an overt sale of the artwork. Of course, the consignees could simply sell it in private but any museum or private collector that now buys the artwork is knowingly purchasing a contested object. For those who do, we will no doubt see legal challenges to several institutions that hold Benin cultural patrimony in due time.

I won’t quote in any detail his responses so in particular Jonathan Fine and Alexander Soifer but encourage you to read his blog post instead (its too late and I have already spend for too much time on compiling the last post).

Footnotes

During the last days trying to follow the news about the now-cancelled sale of the Benin Ivory Pendant Mask currently in the ownership of the Galway family, I have stumbled across some useful blogs and write-ups for understanding some of the wider (legal) issues concerned. Among them, there are a number of blogs chronicling and commenting upon developments related to art, antiquities and the law beyond Nigeria and Africa (if anybody is aware of a blog particularly concerned with African cases pls. let me know. Although, of course, you may also want to keep an eye out for Ogbechie’s African Cultural Patrimony Campaign.).

Art Theft Central

Cultural Heritage in Danger

Culture in Peril

Illicit Cultural Property

Museum Security Network

The Art Law Blog

The Cultural Property and Archaeology Law Blog

These are in addition to Elginism and Looting Matters that I already mentioned before.

With particular regard to the artefacts removed from the Palace of the Oba in Benin in 1897 you may in particular want to read Dr. Kwame Opoku’s writings at Museum Security Network and in Modern Ghana (see this one on the previously named James Cuno or his direct response to Alan Behr’s review of Cuno’s book). It may be worth googling for his most recent contributions as Opoku appears to be one of the most outspoken supporters of the return of the Benin Bronzes but also other artefacts that have arrived in museum and private collections under controversial circumstances.

With regard to the legal situation, Derek Fincham provides a useful discussion (for the lay people among us) of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention at the Illicit Cultural Property blog as well as in this paper. Elginism provides further links to the relevant UN resolutions. Meanwhile, Jonathan Fine suggested that those interested in the legal context may read the Altmann case in which the US supreme court ruled that ‘Austria did not enjoy immunity from suit under the doctrine of sovereign immunity for its expropriation of various paintings that were in the Belvedere Gallery museum in Vienna.’ He suggests it illustrates the efforts of the Altman family to ‘keep their claims to the art in question alive.’ http://supreme.justia.com/us/541/03-13/case.html

On a completely different note, I read with particular interest Nicholas Merkelson’s blog post on ‘subsistence looting’ at Culture in Peril from earlier this year. He rightly observes that it is one thing for archaeologists and anthropologists with their regular incomes and government grants to assert the importance of official and systematic excavations and documentations. It is a completely different case from the point of view of the usually impoverished and marginalised populations from among which ‘looters’ emerge:

The reality is that subsistence digging is most often carried out by refugees from civil violence and victims of economic despair. In developing countries especially, subsistence digging becomes a viable socioeconomic alternative to starvation for the rural poor. Their livelihoods sadly are hampered by land speculation and abuse (by corrupt political and military regimes), extra-local commerce, and a distinct lack of any political voice. The few dollars subsistence diggers receive from the sale of an artifact could easily buy their families such necessities as food, clothing, medicine, and security (not to mention is several times more than archaeologists are willing to pay them as day laborers on their sites).

Additionally, many indigenous groups—in Latin America and elsewhere—see themselves as the legitimate heirs to archaeological and cultural artifacts pulled from their land. They view these treasures as gifts from their ancestors, deposited in the ground by real or mythological patrons, to be harvested by later generations. The Belizean huecheros call their finds “semilla,” or seeds—planted by their ancestors to dig up and sell for money or for actual corn seed. These finds also provide subsistence diggers with a veritable link to the past, a link that is otherwise entirely ignored during archaeological excavation. In a way, archaeologists will treat the past with reverence but treat the descendants of that past like ignorant peasants, as if locals are better off not knowing their connection to the objects being pulled from the ground.

As I said in an earlier post, I haven’t yet quite got my head around debates about restitution of cultural property and/or looting. So, none of the above claims to be representative of the wider debates (though I got the impression that Opoku is an important contributors to these debates who anybody interested needs to read – including me) or by any means comprehensive. … Anyway, I leave it there for now and try to get back to the things that are closer to my own area of research …

Update III: Sotheby's Cancelled Sale of Benin Artefacts

I have to admit that I didn’t expect it. But, on Christmas eve Sotheby’s released the following statement:

24^th December 2010

STATEMENT REGARDING CANCELLATION OF BENIN SALE

“The Benin Ivory Pendant Mask and other items consigned by the descendants of Lionel Galway which Sotheby’s had announced for auction in February 2011 have been withdrawn from sale at the request of the consignors.”

Today, Kayode Ogundamisi, the signatory of the NFL protest letter to Sotheby’s released the following statement via Sahara Reporters.

The attention of the Nigeria Liberty Forum has been drawn to the cancellation of the Benin Idia Mask that was due to take place on 17 February 2011., which according to Sotheby’s press release was at the request of the consignor (Refer to link below)

http://investor.shareholder.com/bid/releases.cfm?ReleasesType=&Year=2010

We view this action by Galway family as a step right direction and we look forward to reaching an agreement with the family on how to ensure the mask and other Benin artefacts are returned to the rightful owners , that is, the Benin people of Edo State in Nigeria.

We can only imagine that this piece of good news is as a result of the collective effort of Nigerians and Africans as a whole, home and abroad. We note in particular the efforts of face book campaigns as well as numerous blogs and some mainstream media outlets as well as a number of legal practitioners in the UK

This is not to say victory has been achieved as the main objective is the return of the artefacts to the Oba of Benin and his subjects. We are also interested in the return of numerous artefacts of unknown whereabouts.

We shall communicate any new developments as they arise.

Wishing all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Kayode Ogundamisi

Convener - Nigeria liberty Forum

At the risk of sounding cynical, I guess, it speaks volumes that it wasn’t the auction house but the Galway family that decided to withdraw these pieces. While (at this point) there is no way of knowing the conversations between Sotheby’s and the family, the auction house thus avoided establishing a precedent that would have shown it vulnerable to public protest. Equally, in the absence of any public statement by the family, one can only speculate to the extent that the NLF campaign, voices of renowned historians of African arts or the efforts of Nigerian officials affected the family’s decision.[1]

With regard to the latter, Akin Ogundiran, Chair of the Africana Studies Department and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology & History at University of North Carolina, Charlotte noted on H-Net that

… those who are associated with the institution have been duly notified of the pending Sotheby sale. Likewise, the Nigerian officials know of this development.

And, an article published by the Nigerian Observer suggests that the Edo State Government had

… called on the United Nations as a matter of public importance to intervene in the anticipated plans by the children of late lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Lionel Gallwey, then Colonial Deputy Commissioner and Vice consul in the Oil Rivers Protectorate to auction the highly valued Benin Royal artifacts, come February next year. […] “We are calling on the United Nations to please show good example, because what the British did to us, seems like what Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait and if they could try in Saddam Hussein and he was hanged, we are equally calling on them to identify the grand children and children of the late lieutenant Colonel Gallwey and they should be brought to book?

He therefore called on the children of the late lieutenant Colonel and Mr. Jean Fritts, the Director of African Oceanic Arts at Sotheby’s London, to refrain from any criminal act in regards to their plans to auction a sixteen century Benin Ivory pendant mask said to be one of the last great masterpieces of Benin Sculpture remaining in private hands in February 2011.

“They should seek good counsel and refrain from selling the mask. Anything that makes them to ignore this call, Edo people, the Edo State government will use this as a starting point to protect our intellectual properties “ said Omo-Ojo.

I have not found any reports suggesting the extent to which these official statements influenced the Galway family’s decision. Ogundiran, however, strongly doubted their ability to pressurise Sotheby’s and the Galways to abandon the sale. Either way, I for once remain curious, whether and when the pieces will quietly reappear for auction at Sotheby’s, another of the auction houses or (more secretively) in a specialised art dealers’ catalogue.

Meanwhile with regard to wider debates about ownership of artefacts produced in and by Africans ‘collected’ and removed during the colonial period or under other controversial circumstances, the now cancelled sale of the artefacts from Benin has generated some opinion across the net, some of which maybe worth reproducing here.

The Legal Situation.

Jonathan Fine, who currently undertakes a PhD with Chika Okeke at Princeton but has previously worked as an attorney in Washington and New York noted onH-Net’s African Art section that in principle …

… Sotheby's can try to sell anything they want. They question is whether they incur civil or criminal liability for doing so if they know or should know has a cloud over their title (which is a nice legal way of saying that there is a reason to doubt that the people purporting to furnish them to Sotheby's for sale can convey good title to the art works in question). … But it seems to me that Sotheby's may well be running the risk of incurring civil and/or criminal liability by selling these objects. …

With regard to the Galway family’s right to the artefacts, he noted that by the late 19^th century, the

… legal norm was clear concerning looting in war between European states at the time. It was, however, not universally applied to looting carried out in Africa, Asia, the Levant, and South America. I would contend that the uneven application of the principle should not matter -- looting was looting. Against this there is a legal principle (statutes of repose and statutes of limitations) which means that if a person knows that someone else has his or her property and he or she acquiesces in it, then -- after a period of time -- the original owner loses the right to reclaim the property. This, I would say, is less a concern for the objects on sale at Sotheby's because, as best I can tell, their presence in the Galway family was not openly known, and so no period of limitations or repose would or could have started running against them. However, this may be quite an issue for seeking the return of other Benin objects that have been openly known in collections outside Benin for decades.

[Although, does anybody have further information about the campaign for restitution started in 1937 by Oba Akenzua II mentioned in the letter of protest I reproduced in an earlier post?]

According to Fine, then, in legal terms, ownership to stolen objects can be obtained under certain circumstances.

… in some legal systems any innocent purchaser in due course can obtain legal title (which is another reason why the question of fraud becomes important). Moreover, sometimes, under the color of national patrimony laws, title may vest in the state, rather than individuals -- even for property that is stolen as between individuals …

Also,

… [i]f Oba Erediauwa makes a claim to be paid for the object that are being sold at auction -- and he is paid -- then, I would think, at law, he will have acquiesced in the sale itself to the extent that legal title could be passed to the new purchasers.

The Legal vs. The Legitimate/Moral.

In response, Ogundiran rightly raised the difference between what is legal and what can be considered legitimate.

What is just, legal, and moral cannot be discussed or settled in the vacuum of power. Power as well as the political will and ability to mobilize or coerce public opinion determine justice, legality, and morality at any time. […] … those who would form opinions about the arts and crafts of Benin, and the justification for the descendants of conquistadors and looters to benefit from property stolen by their ancestors need to first understand the history that led to the British invasion of Benin …

In this regard, Looting Matters in a post already dating to 2008 quoted Kwame Appiah[2]

Some of the heirs to the kingdom of Benin, the people of Southwest Nigeria, want the bronze their ancestors cast, shaped, handled, wondered at. They would like to wonder at—if we will not let them touch—that very thing. The connection people feel to cultural objects that are symbolically theirs, because they were produced from within a world of meaning by their ancestors—the connection to art through identity—is powerful. It should be acknowledged. The cosmopolitan, through, wants to remind us of other connections.

The Politics of Identifying Legitimate Owners of Cultural Patrimony.

In addition (and he formulates this far better than I did in question form in my first post), Fine raised the question of who the legitimate Nigerian owners of the Benin artefacts may be:

Who is the present owner of the pieces is a question to be determined by British and Nigerian law. I do not know that the descendants of the Oba and/or the current Oba are the owners under Nigerian law. The objects could belong to the Nigerian state under a claim of cultural property if there is a law under which these objects fall. They could belong to the Nigerian state under whatever terms the Oba's sovereignty was ceded to the British and then descended from the British to Nigeria in 1960. They also could belong to Oba Erediauwa alone. Or there may be provisions of Nigerian, British or treaty law, that resolve these issues. These are matter for which a Nigerian and or British solicitor would have to offer an opinion, and one would need to determine whether other countries would agree to enforce those legal provisions.

Also (and again, far more skilfully formulated than by me), the discussion on H-Net raises some of the questions that inform some of my unease with calls for restitution. Again, Fine argues that …

… [c]ultural patrimony claims are often an artifact of a particular period of nationalism and of the idea that the nation-state has the right to control what is and what is not culturally important. We should be very careful, I think, before vesting states, with all their political agendas, with such power in the realm of culture. The claim of cultural patrimony is almost always made based on a desire of today's nations to naturalize themselves by finding roots in the past. …

Also, as Flynn at Art Knows noted, despite the substantiated campaign it may be worth remembering that not everybody in Benin necessarily shares the aims of the restitution campaign. Flynn here quotes Ronald Hazoume, a citizen of the State of Benin, rather than the Benin Kingdom. However, I read a comment to the same end at the Nigeria for Nigerians Facebook page in response a posting linking to the NFL’s Facebook Group and Petition.

I will advice that you do not push for the artefacts to be returned to the present Edo State, else it will be on the next flight to the same auctioning house or another one, this time by the illegally legalised Politicians of Edo State. The asking amount will be too tempting that you will only hear that it was stolen when the security staff went to pee.

Another commenter expressed his support for the campaign but questioned the priorities is reflected:

Sounds good letter to me even though I am not convinced this is a priority cause to fight. I must admit that some of the comments here are quite compelling, but I am still finding it difficult to see how this should really border us more than what our own people are doing to us today. I remain of the belief that we must fight our internal/current enemies first before going after our external and historical enemies.

A similar sentiment is expressed by this comment that has been reproduced at the Dialogues blog (it is rather long but I’m not sure how to best shorten it further).

So some oyinbo person wants to sell his loot and we are about to crap in our pants? Who cares? Na wa O! Is THAT the only thing they stole? Why are we now wetting our pants over ONE art piece? A pox on all their houses. I am a descendant of the Benin empire. I don't know of any Nigerian that is not upset that these artifacts were looted and moved abroad. Having said that, it is my fervent prayer that those beautiful pieces stay away from Nigeria for now. I will personally stone whomever has the temerity to return the pieces. In fact enh, if I was the artwork I would kick against being returned to the "museums" of Nigeria. I would even beg for political asylum. Why would I substitute a life of lush living behind climate-controlled glass, oogled by nice people who know art, for a life of guaranteed misery on some God-forsaken "museum" in Nigeria? The art pieces will lie somewhere dirty at the mercy of filth, dust, neglect, corruption, etc. The curator would steal millions of dollars allocated for their annual upkeep and who knows, one drunken night, the "head of state" du jour might give them to his Indian mistress as a gift, after 1 minute of sex. The artifacts will come back home but not yet. I am not even sure to where self, the old Benin Kingdom is no more. Who will accept the art on the kingdom's behalf? […] Are these busybody petitioners just now noticing that the piece has been missing? Which one concern them inside? The courts should ask them which part of the art work belongs to them. Shebi it is only 3 million pounds that they are crying about. Ibori used to steal that every day. Every day. And you, Kenn[3] have been silent about that, well you will say oh yes white folks steal also! This group of powerful intellectuals could start a letter writing campaign to protest the fact that fully a quarter of our budget goes to supporting the legislative branch (or something similarly outrageous). I will sign that petition. Kenn how many of you have signed a petition against the wanton abuse and murder of the "witch children" of Nigeria? That I will sign. Kenn, I have an idea. Let us start a petition against the West. Dear West, do not allow any penny to leave Nigeria (use Nigeria as a test pilot). That is, they may steal but they must spend the money on and in Nigeria. Do not permit any of our bastard leaders to go abroad for "medical attention!" Now you are talking. I will sign that one. To hell with the mask. Keep it in Europe. Have a great life, mask. Those of us stuck in Africa envy you your life!

Having said this, the majority of comments I have read there and elsewhere strongly supported the campaign to reclaim these artefacts for the Kingdom of Benin and/or Nigeria.

On a different note, Soifer Alexander, among others, problematised the social relations that defined the artefact’s production.

If all or part of creating an artefact was slave labor, do we assign the ownership to slave owners and thus condone slavery?

With particular regard to Benin, Ogundiran refutes the notion that Benin’s wealth was founded upon slave trade or slave labour:

Benin contributed the least to the Atlantic slavery in the entire West African Atlantic seaboard despite the facts that with its powers and military might it cold have become the main mart for eslaved captives. Its lukewarm attitude towards human trafficking was unprofitable to its European trading partners … The artists of Benin were not enslaved. They worked for the king and for other elites, and they were compensated for their brilliant works. Yes, there were slaves and other socially marginalised people in Benin but Benin was never a slave based society …

Nevertheless (and maybe as the result of growing up in East Germany), I have sympathies for the wider question raised by Alexander. But, of course, once raised, this question needs to be extended to all artefacts financed through the exploitation of labour. Most obviously, how does it relate to artefacts and buildings enabled by wealth acquired through participation in the international slave trade? But of course, it could be extended to the wealth and collections of almost all royal dynasties and affluent families worldwide, no? Or, as an anonymous reader of Ogebchie’s blog commented …

… some of the bronze used to make these works are at least proceeds from slave trading. However, while it may undermine Benin moral high ground, it does not undercut it. Using the same logic, Britain should cede all the lands and resources it acquired through slave trading and colonial conquest. The USA should give up the country to Native Americans and relocate everyone back to their countries of origin.

Hitting the nail on the head, this comment highlights another recurring themes of the debates: the question why different measures appeared to be applied to the global north and Africa.

Double Standards.

Many debates about reparations for Africa in acknowledgement of the damages done by the international slave trade or regarding the restitution of cultural artefacts highlight, rightly or wrongly (I am in no position to assess their validity), assert that Africans are regularly denied rights granted to other states and communities. Within the context of the recent campaign against the sale of the Benin Ivory pendant masque at Sotheby’s, this issue was raised most prominently by Ogbechie:

All across the world today, many stolen artworks are being repatriated to their countries of origins. No one is asking the cultural owners of these artworks to pay for the privilege of retrieving their ancestors’ properties. Therefore, the relevant issue is whether Africans have any legal rights to their lives, natural and cultural resources. At what point does the brazen dispossession of Africa become a significant political, economic and moral issue? The Sotheby’s sale is part of a broad disregard for the very real impact of dispossession on the reality and fortunes of black Africans today. There is no justice here and it does not appear that black Africans or their descendants will be afforded any kind of legal justice in the prevailing context of white Western power. And yes, this is clearly a racial issue. […] It is therefore time for all Africans who have the resources to contribute to a massive effort to bring the global legal system to bear on these institutions who traffic in stolen African cultural patrimony. There are already precedents: the Holocaust reparation legal challenge is a clear precedence; so is the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection Act. The issue of African cultural patrimony is an urgent human rights issue.

In particular, the comparison to the restitution of art works to survivors of the Holocaust and their families has been reiterated by several other authors. Thus Chika Okeke opined that

Frankly, I see no logical difference between the fate of these works taken from the Oba of Benin's private collection, and the works seized from their Jewish owners by the Nazis.

Carmen McCain asserted that

If art looted from families during the Nazi era in Europe is being returned to the descendants of those from whom it was stolen, then there is no excuse not to return these valuable cultural artifacts back to the palace in Benin.

In response to Ogbechie’s post at Aachronym, Michael Kirkpatrick argued that

I find it extremely hypocritical that the art world is discussing how to return artwork that was stolen by the Nazi’s during WWII, but they don’t see the parallels with African items stolen from the continent by “explorers” and “collectors”.

I do not have any legal background. But it may be worth noting (especially as one of the major collections of artefacts removed from the Oba of Benin’s palace in 1897 is in Britain and the Galway family is British), the UK’s Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill. It explicitly provides for

‘the transfer from public museum and gallery collections of arts, artefacts and other objects stolen between 1933 and 1945 by or on behalf of the Nazi regime, its members and sympathisers; to provide for the return of such artefacts and objects to the lawful owners, their heirs and successors; and for connected purposes.’

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am not quite sure why the same principles that apply to art works expropriated by the Nazis should not apply to artefacts illegitimately removed from African or, for that matter, other non-‘Western’ contexts.

Of course, as Fine noted, ‘legal norms …concerning looting in war between European states [were] not universally applied to looting carried out in Africa, Asia, the Levant, and South America,’ clearly reflecting inequalities of power.

In addition, I suspect that one of the issues here is the almost universal acknowledgement of the Holocaust as an outstanding crime against humanity, an interpretation that is explicitly shared by the Third Reich’s legal successor, the Federal Republic of Germany. By contrast, a similar official acknowledgement of the crimes of colonisation in Africa and elsewhere by the former colonial powers is still lacking.[4] A different argument is implied by Ogbechie when he discusses the complicity of historians of African arts who overwhelmingly continue to attribute artefacts to social and cultural groups rather than individuals. Art works expropriated by the Nazis are most commonly returned to individuals, families or institutions. However, the artefacts removed from the palace of the Oba of Benin in 1897 could clearly be argued to have been owned by the Oba rather than an ill-defined social or cultural group.

However, beyond the comparison with the repatriation of art works expropriated by the Nazis to their individual owners, European states have, sometimes successfully, advanced claims for restitution on behalf of institutions within their sovereignty. To return to the World War II context, Germany has claimed art works looted by Russian troops (among others, I do not know how these issues have been handled with the other allied powers). In 2007, Germany issued a catalogue of missing art works in a push for their return. I do not know whether the fact that most African states existed by the time the artefacts in question were produced and/or removed should make a difference here. Surely, in the same way that Germany claims legal successorship of the Third Reich and thus legitimates its claim to art works removed from its institutions during or in the aftermath of World War II, an argument could be made that the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the legal successor of the colonial state which (for the sake of argument) claimed legal succession of all pre-colonial political entities including the Kingdom of Benin. Hence, why should Germany be able to make claims for the restitution of art works but not Nigeria on behalf of the Royal Court in Benin?[5] - Although this, of course, takes us straight back to questions of who the contemporary legitimate owners are. - Having said this, negotiations between Germany and in particular Russia in this regard have not resulted in the return of all ‘missing artworks’ nor have such claims been undisputed. [6]

I’m not quite sure where I’m going here with my argument(s). Maybe I’m trying to suggest that mainly ‘yes,’ Ogbechie is right, debates about restitution of artefacts reflect wider imbalances of power that extend beyond the arts (although I am not sure whether I’d really qualify this as institutional racism as he seems to suggest). But, somewhat also ‘no,’ claims to cultural heritage, even within Europe, even where they are covered by laws regulating war boot, are not that straightforward either. Which is why the unease with questions of restitution I expressed in my first post on the topic extends far beyond the recent campaign against the now-cancelled sale of the Galway’s collection at Sotheby’s in February 2011.

Within the recent debate about the Galway family’s rights to the artefacts removed from the Palace of the Oba of Benin in 1897 by their ancestor, broader arguments about world heritage and their hypocrisy also resurfaced. It was briefly raised by Michael Kirkpatrick in response to Ogbechie’s blog post

The question that I ask educated people in the western art world is this: “What is the difference between art and artifacts?”. Art is created by artists. Artists have names. Usually there are no names associated with any of the African masks, carvings, baskets, or pottery that stereotypically get exhibited in American art galleries. Artifacts have cultural, historical, and educational value. That is why they should be in a natural history museum if they are to be exhibited anywhere. My goal is to see more contemporary African art celebrated and appreciated.

However, I do not recall having read anybody else commenting to this end within the last days’ debate. I guess, Chika Okake rightly observed that

It is one thing for the likes of James Cuno at the Art Institute of Chicago to continue arguing against the possibility of repatriating art works plundered by European powers in the age of colonialism but that have found their way into the so-called repositories of human civilization; it is another for the family of this plunderer to bring out the stuff their ancestor stole a few generations ago from wherever they hid them, in the hope of making a fortune.

Hence, this was what the thrust of the discussion focused upon …

I assume that this will be my last post on this issue for now. Meanwhile, it looks as if the Facebook group African Cultural Patrinomy started by Ogbechi may evolve into an interesting source for all things related to African artefacts and questions of legitimate ownership and as I mentioned before, its always worth having an eye on blogs like Elginism and Looting Matters.

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^[1] Tom Flynn at Art Knows speculated whether the controversy was possibly anticipated by the Galway family:

Sotheby's usually disperse ethnographic material and 'tribal' art such as the Benin masks through their Paris salerooms, but it seems that Galway's descendants requested that Sotheby's sell them in London instead. Did they fear a similar campaign to that which greeted the Chinese Zodiac bronzes?

[2] Whose lecture on Cosmpolitanism – Ethics in a World of Strangers can be watched on UCTV, btw.

[3] Kenneth Harrow, Professor of African Literature and Cinema at Michigan State Uni, who forwarded the NLF protest letter to the USA-Africa Dialogue Group.

[4] Germany, for example, still refuses to officially acknowledge responsibility for the Herero and Namaqua Genocide in present-day Namibia. The main line of argument I am familiar is that the current German state does not consider itself a legal successor to the German Empire under the House of Hohenzollern, although this is disputed.

[5] I have read an argument along these lines somewhere but cannot remember where – so my apologies to the original poster for not acknowledging their contribution here.

[6] Fine seem to indicate likewise when he asks whether

… [f]or instance, to be provocative, what real claim based on "cultural heritage" can a country like Italy assert over Greek vases made 2000 years before Italy existed as a nation, when the people who brought the objects to what is now Italy have long since died? When the Ottoman sultan's decided that the Parthenon marbles were not part of their cultural heritage, and allowed the British to remove them, how has this undermined later Greek nationalists' claims of the paramount importance of the sculptures as cultural patrimony?