British Museum
I finally went to the British museum. I say ‘finally’ because the British Museum has been part of my undergraduate and graduate research for years. The British Museum is the mother of museums. They have successfully documented British spoils acquired through unwelcomed expeditions, colonization, and war. In the beginning my blood would boil at the thought of its history. Just thinking of the arrogance of a museum to display with no shame how they stole and ravaged cultures. Over time I began to chill a bit and come to terms with the fact that this is just a consequence of war.
It all began with a conversation with a highly intelligent know-it-all artist who suggested I look into the repatriation of traditional African objects since I was really getting into the subject of Nazi-era stolen objects. Well I did and never turned back. In the beginning I was naïve and saw the issue in black in white. I felt the royal goods of Benin taken during the British punitive expedition to Nigeria in 1897 should be returned immediately. I studied the issue and wrote about it with passion. I looked at the laws, sociological concerns, anthropological opinions, and even worked for the International Council of African Museums, a non-profit organization who writes security policies. The more research I did the more I realized that the objects in some cases are better off at the British museum simply because they are safe from being stolen and sold on the black market.
The moment when I came faced to face with sculptures I stared at in books for years was not as dramatic as I imagined. I stood for I think the expected time an art historian would stare at an object. I was in complete awe of how detailed the objects were. They worked in wood, ivory and bronze all with the same consistent impressive skill. It was cool to see also the tourist objects made of ivory with ugly European men on horses. I was comparing that to our current tourist objects that I believe are complete junk, but in a couple hundred years you never know, they too could end up on a museum shelf to display the value of mass production.
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