The Brutish Museums The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Ingls)-Envo rpido

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Winner of the 2021 Elliott P. Skinner Book AwardNew York Times ‘Best Art Books’ 2020’Essential’ – Sunday Times’Brilliantly enraged’ – New York Review of Books’A real game-changer’- EconomistWalk into any Western museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes – a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private Brutish Museums sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonization of museums. Since its first publication, museums across the western world have begun to return their Bronzes to Nigeria, heralding a new era in the way we relate to the objects of empire we once took for granted.