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In Germany, a new museum stirs up a colonial controversy
Jacob Kushner
© Photograph by Sean Gallup, Getty
Restorer Roxane Julie von der Beek repairs a drum from Mali at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, one of several German museums moving their collections to the new Humboldt Forum.
For years, the head of a queen sat in storage in a building in Berlin. Her face is smooth, but her head is intricately engraved and topped with a crown befitting a
lyoba a matriarch figure from the Kingdom of Benin, in present day Nigeria.
Carved in the early 16
th century, it is one of more than a thousand metal sculptures looted by British soldiers as they plundered Benin City in 1897. In the century since, the so-called Benin Bronzes have been bought and sold by museums and private collectors across Europe and North America, and today they are among the most coveted African artifacts in the world. ....

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