The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston will close its Benin Kingdom Gallery on 28 April, but most of the works it had been created to display will not be repatriated to their place of origin. Instead, all but five of the objects will be returned to their donor, the filmmaker and banking heir Robert Owen Lehman.
The objects in question are known as Benin Bronzes, flashpoints in a broader conversation on the ethics of collecting and displaying objects taken during the colonial era. Some of the objects in Lehman’s collection were stolen during a notoriously violent 1897 raid on Benin City in present-day Nigeria, during which British troops sacked the African empire’s royal compound and took thousands of artefacts.
In recent years, the Nigerian government has called upon institutions abroad to return Benin Bronzes, but because the MFA Boston does not own the Bronzes outright it was unable to unilaterally do so. According to reporting by the Boston Globe, ongoing negotiations between the MFA and Lehman had come to a standstill, and while the museum jockeyed for Lehman to transfer title of the objects in exchange for a long-term loan, instead, the donor asked for the artefacts back.
“It’s really not appropriate for us to bring them into the collection,” Victoria Reed, the museum’s senior curator for provenance, told the Globe. “But that means that we do not own them, and therefore we don’t have control over them.”
The MFA’s director and chief executive Matthew Teitelbaum calls a “mutual agreement”, Lehman rescinded the gift. “We were trying to get to a point where the court could assume ownership, and we could ensure display,” Teitelbaum told the Globe. “We were making some progress, but without any certainty of outcome.” In an interview with The New York Times, he added: “This was not the outcome anyone wanted.”
Lehman originally donated the group of 34 pieces in 2008 in a deal brokered with the MFA’s then-director Malcolm Rogers. The gift was structured on a staggered timetable, so that individual bronzes would enter the museum’s collection over time. Teitelbaum stated that the museum “paused” the Lehmann gift in 2021. As of today, the MFA holds titles to five of the objects in the Lehman gift, and those artefacts will remain in the MFA’s collection.
In February the current oba (ruler) of Benin, Ewuare II, who has been outspoken about his claims to the bronzes, gave his blessing to the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments to handle repatriation efforts on his behalf. Previous to Lehman’s rescinding the gift of the bronzes, the MFA had been in contact with the royal court, but the Nigerian government had not submitted a renewed ownership claim.
In June, the museum will display the five remaining Benin Bronzes it did acquire from Lehman’s collection in its Art of Africa Gallery.