To catch a culture thief

Michael Prodger on Art

LATE 2021 HAS SEEN a flurry of activity as a number of objects with contested provenances were returned to their countries of origin. In October, Jesus College, Cambridge became the first institution in the world to send back a Benin bronze, looted in 1897, when the sculpture of a cockerel it has held since 1906 was returned to Nigeria. Aberdeen University quickly followed suit with the restitution of its head of an oba — king. And in France, the Quai Branly museum in Paris held a six-day exhibition of 26 bronzes from Dahomey from its collection as a last hurrah before shipping them back to Africa. Meanwhile, the Gilbert Collection —1,200 items of precious metalwork and objets de vertu housed at the V&A in London — has returned to Turkey a gold…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021

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