Bronze plaques depicting a junior court official (left) and warrior chief were removed from the Royal Palace of Benin in 1897 by the British military
Joining recent moves by European museums to return African art treasures to Nigeria, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced today that is sending three objects back to the country. Two of the works, a pair of 16th-century Benin Court brass plaques of a
Warrior Chief and
Junior Court Official, were donated to the museum in 1991 by the Modern art dealer Klaus Perls and his wife Dolly, while the third, a 14th-century
Ife Head, was recently offered to the museum for purchase by another collector.
John Mitchell
A range of throwing sticks known as i ula. Picture: www.new-guinea-tribal-arts.com
Fiji’s hardwood forests have spawned many blessings for centuries.
They provided the necessary raw materials for building some of the fastest environmental-friendly sea crafts that traversed the world’s biggest ocean and accessing the hundreds of islands scattered within its boundary.
Also, forests were fundamentally the indigenous people’s source of food, herbal medicines and cooking fuel, habitat for totemic animals and trees, and timber for building homes and designing traditional artefacts.
But among the forests’ most treasured value, is its use as raw materials for the manufacture of revered war clubs.