Scottish university hands over looted Benin Bronze to Nigeria | Canada News Media
Connect with us

Art

Scottish university hands over looted Benin Bronze to Nigeria

Published

 on

A Scottish university will on Thursday hand over to a Nigerian delegation a Benin Bronze that was among thousands looted by British troops in 1897, the third European institution in two days to return cultural artefacts to their African homelands.

The sculpture represents the head of an Oba, or king, of the once mighty Kingdom of Benin, located in what is now Nigeria. The bronzes stolen from its royal court are among Africa’s most significant heritage objects and are mostly in Europe.

The University of Aberdeen acquired the bronze head at an auction in 1957. Following a recent review of its provenance, which confirmed it was one of the looted items, the university contacted the Nigerian authorities to offer to hand it over.

“Over the last 40 years, the Benin Bronzes have become important symbols of injustice,” said Professor George Boyne, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the university, in a statement ahead of a handover ceremony.

“It would not have been right to have retained an item of such great cultural significance that was acquired in such reprehensible circumstances.”

The present Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, said the bronzes were “imbued with the spirit of the people from whom they were taken”, adding that he hoped the Scottish university’s “noble act” would inspire other institutions to follow suit.

On Wednesday, a Cambridge University college returned to Nigeria another Benin Bronze, while in Paris, the Quai Branly museum handed over 26 artefacts stolen in 1892 to the republic of Benin, a former French colony that borders Nigeria.

The handovers are the clearest sign yet of growing momentum towards the return of artefacts taken away from Africa by Europeans during the colonial period. Germany has agreed to start returning Benin Bronzes held in its museums next year.

The returns are likely to increase pressure on the British Museum in London, which holds by far the largest and most significant collection of Benin Bronzes.

 

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Art

40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

Published

 on


[unable to retrieve full-text content]

40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate  Cracked.com



Source link

Continue Reading

Art

John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

Published

 on


[unable to retrieve full-text content]

John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96  CBC.ca



Source link

Continue Reading

Art

A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

Published

 on

 

LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.

More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.

The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.

They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.

“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”

It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.

Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.

“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Exit mobile version