Swiss museums return Benin bronzes to Nigeria

Switzerland has agreed to hand over the artefacts Keystone-SDA

Three Swiss museums have officially returned 18 cultural artefacts, known as the Benin Bronzes, to Nigeria.

Swiss government minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider visited the African country to mark the beginning of a new chapter in cultural cooperation between the two countries.

The visit coincided with the official return of 18 so-called Benin Bronzes. After some 130 years, they are returning to the place from which they were once looted by British colonial troops.

In February 1897, British troops raided and plundered the palace of the king, the Oba, in the south-west of what is now Nigeria.

+ What a Swiss curator has to say about looted art in museums

Thousands of ornate objects, regarded as powerful symbols of kingship and the connection to the ancestors, found their way onto the international art market and thus also into Swiss museums.

For Nigerians, however, these are not merely exhibition pieces, but part of their own spiritual and cultural heritage, which stretches back many centuries.

Ancient history

The significance of their return is therefore immense for Nigerians. “They tell our story. And without history, there is no present,” said Aisha Adamu Augie, director of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation in Lagos. The story these objects tell is now to be conveyed through various projects, for example with school classes.

And, as was made clear in the official speeches, the return is also intended to help heal the trauma caused by colonialism.

The restitution is also significant for Switzerland. It is taking place on the initiative of local museums. Eight of them joined forces in 2021 to form the Benin Initiative Switzerland.

Together with partners from Nigeria, they have investigated the provenance of the so-called Benin Bronzes in the museums’ collections as part of this project.

This research revealed the problematic provenance of precisely these 18 objects that have now been returned, which were held at the Museum of Ethnology at the University of Zurich, the Rietberg Museum in Zurich and the Musée d’ethnographie in Geneva. Nine further objects, also of questionable provenance, may remain in Switzerland on loan by mutual agreement.

Baume-Schneider and Nigeria’s Minister of Culture, Hannatu Musa Musawa, signed a bilateral agreement in the Nigerian port city of Lagos to combat the illegal trade in cultural property.

For Switzerland, this is the second such agreement with a sub-Saharan country, following the one with Côte d’Ivoire last year.

In addition, the federal government handed over a bronze bracelet and four archaeological monoliths from the Nigerian Niger Delta, which had been seized as part of criminal proceedings in the cantons of Geneva and Ticino and handed over to the federal government.

Translated from German, sub-edited by mga