Hard on the heels of last year’s Benin Bronze repatriations by Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Aberdeen is news that the Great North Museum: Hancock is seeking to repatriate a Benin brass stave to Nigeria.

Acquired along with other items from London’s Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in 1951, a period when the Wellcome disposed of many non-medical items that no longer fitted its collections policy, the Museum's brass stave with bird finial is most likely to have been part of a ceremonial musical instrument, played by striking with a metal rod.

Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (TWAM) satisfied themselves the stave was one of thousands of objects forcibly removed by British troops from Benin City in 1897 and advised the Museum’s stakeholders, Newcastle University and the Natural History Society of Northumbria, to consider its “proactive repatriation” to Nigeria. Approval was unanimous.

“We have been researching the unclear history of the brass stave in the Great North Museum: Hancock and now know for certain that it was taken violently during the Punitive Expedition of 1897,” said Keith Merrin, Director of TWAM.

Professor Vee Pollock, Dean of Culture and the Creative Arts at Newcastle University, has said the stave is not only an object of cultural importance for the people of Benin, it’s also “a symbol of historic injustice and extreme violence”. She has thanked her colleagues at Aberdeen University for their advice which "informed our proactive approach”.

Detail of bird finial, Benin City

The Benin stave is one of several objects in the collections of the Great North Museum: Hancock that the Museum acknowledges are inextricably linked with Britain’s colonial past and systemic racism. In line with the Museums Association's recently published new guidelines for decolonising museum collections, the Museum explained that it's working towards using its collections in "an equitable and just way" and will be ensuring that all proposals it receives for repatriation are acknowledged publicly.

Like Jesus College, Cambridge and Aberdeen University, the Great North Museum is negotiating the stave's return with representatives of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM). The NCMM is recommending the return of all recovered Benin artefacts to the proposed new Edo Museum of West African Art and not to another conflicting museum project masterminded by the current Oba, Ewuare II.

“A museum, through what it displays, how it relates to its audiences and what it does, should be a place of learning, and we hope that through this process we can work with partners in Nigeria and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments to facilitate better understanding and enhanced cooperation,” explained Professor Pollock.

The Great North Museum: Hancock is included in Dan Hicks’ provisional list of 45 museum collections in the UK that currently hold objects looted from Benin City (The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks, Pluto Press, 2020. Appendix 5).

Photos: Benin brass ceremonial stave

Courtesy of Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives