A sculpture of a horse and rider, in the British Museum. A new book examines the looting of the Benin Bronzes in 1897
Blood and Bronze by Paddy Docherty Hurst, 240 pages, £20
At no time since 1897, when the Benin Bronzes were looted from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin (in what's now Nigeria), have they been discussed as much as they are today.
In the 1890s, the debate focused on how it was that an African kingdom, dismissed and derided as barbarous and uncivilized by the politicians, press, and public of late-Victorian Britain, had been able to produce such exquisite works of art - objects of outstanding technical and aesthetic sophistication.
Today the Benin Bronzes are famous once again, while the British invasion of Benin has become infamous. The contrast is stark between the beauty of the objects and the ugliness of the history by which 700 of them ended up in the British Museum, with hundreds more in museums across the world. Now the art of Benin is at the epicenter of demands that western colonial-era museums return objects seized by the soldiers and administrator of Europe's empires.
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