German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts publishes list of Benin bronzes

The pub­li­ca­tion is based on a joint de­ci­sion of the Min­is­ter of State for Cul­ture and the Me­dia, Moni­ka Grüt­ters, the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment func­tion of the Ger­man mem­ber mu­se­ums of the Benin Di­a­logue Group, the re­spec­tive Min­is­ters of Cul­ture of the Fed­er­al States re­spon­si­ble for these mu­se­ums and the Fed­er­al For­eign Of­fice of 29 April 2021. The pub­li­ca­tion en­sures the great­est pos­si­ble trans­paren­cy ac­cord­ing to Moni­ka Grüt­ters: “This reaf­firms our will­ing­ness to en­gage in a di­a­log with the Nige­ri­an side to fa­cil­i­tate both sub­stan­tial re­turns of Benin bronzes and for­ward-look­ing co­op­er­a­tion on this is­sue.”

In the in­ven­to­ry overview of Benin bronzes, the ini­tial fo­cus is on the mem­ber mu­se­ums of the Benin Di­a­logue Group. These in­clude the Eth­nol­o­gis­ches Mu­se­um, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Eth­no­log­i­cal Mu­se­um of the Na­tion­al Mu­se­ums in Berlin, the Lin­den Mu­se­um in Stuttgart, the Mu­se­um am Rothen­baum – Kul­turen und Kün­ste der Welt in Ham­burg, the Raut­en­strauch-Joest-Mu­se­um in Cologne, and the Eth­nol­o­gis­che Museen of Staatliche Kun­st­samm­lun­gen in Leipzig and Dres­den. Ini­tial­ly, a to­tal of 1127 ob­jects are pre­sent­ed in the database. These will be grad­u­al­ly ex­pand­ed to in­clude in­for­ma­tion from oth­er in­sti­tu­tions. The sur­vey in­cludes art ob­jects from the Roy­al Court of the King­dom of Benin that were loot­ed from the Roy­al Palace of Benin by the British Army in 1897 and are now kept in mu­se­ums in Ger­many.

In the medi­um term, as part of the “3-way strat­e­gy” agreed up­on by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, the Fed­er­al States and mu­nic­i­pal um­brel­la or­ga­ni­za­tions, an in­de­pen­dent por­tal for col­lec­tion items from colo­nial con­texts is to be cre­at­ed with­in the Ger­man Dig­i­tal Li­brary, through which all Benin bronzes held in Ger­man in­sti­tu­tions, as well as oth­er col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts, will be ac­ces­si­ble on­line.
For more in­for­ma­tion on this of­fice, please vis­it: https://www.cp3c.de/.