Tuesday 5th July 2022, 12:00pm

Session 247: The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks

For this lunch session, Aoife Rosenmeyer selected two chapters from the book The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution by Dan Hicks (Pluto Press, 2020).

“Walk into any Western museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artifacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes – a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections.” -Book Cover

Session location: Reseda Zürich am Hauptbahnhof

Participants: 4