LOS ANGELES â At least six sculptures, potentially as many as 19, stolen during an 1897 massacre by British colonists in Africa have been sitting quietly in two Los Angeles art museum collections for the past half-century.
That status is likely to change. Pressure has been building for longer than a decade for the return of thousands of objects looted from the Royal Palace in Benin City, located in what is southern Nigeria. Repatriation of Benin art is as essential as restitution for art looted during the Holocaust, which this theft resembles.
Britainâs invading imperial forces were after natural resources, especially the rubber and palm oil necessary for industrial expansion, when they targeted the palace. Mass murder at the seat of the Edo peoplesâ nonindustrial African kingdom, together with the cityâs virtual erasure, confiscation of its sacred relics and their triumphal display in Europeâs museums, carried with it a symbolic assertion of the superiority of Queen Victoriaâs white Christian realm.