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Elizabeth Merritt

How Germany Changed Its Mind, and Gave Benin Bronzes Back to Nigeria - The New York Times - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-bronzes-nigeria-germany.html

repatriation voluntary repatriation benin germany

shared by Elizabeth Merritt on 21 Dec 22 - No Cached
  • by a changing social consensus about the ethics of holding on to such items, and further strengthened by a backlash against Germany’s flagship cultural project: the Humboldt Forum,
  • Germany’s approach also contrasts with those of the United States and British governments, which have left decisions up to individual institutions
  • some of the most important museums in England cannot return their Benin Bronzes, even if they wanted to, without a change in the law. That includes the British Museum, which owns about 900 of the artifacts, arguably the world’s finest collection.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • a key turning point there occurred in 2019, amid growing public pressure.
  • a rising awareness in Germany of its own colonial crimes — including the killing of tens of thousands of Nama and Herero people in what is now Namibia. The atrocity, carried out between 1904 and 1908, is widely seen as the first genocide of the 20th century.
  • Until then, the main vehicle for discussing the return of the Benin Bronzes had been the Benin Dialogue Group, a network founded in 2010 that brought together Nigerian representatives and figures from European museums with bronzes in their collections. The group, however, favored loans over transfers of ownership.
  • The agreement stipulated that all objects that had been obtained “unethically” would be liable for return and directed institutions to facilitate claims by producing publicly available inventories.
  • obstacles remained on the Nigerian side. Although the country had requested the return of the bronzes since the 1970s, there was conflict over who would take ownership of the artifacts. Both the Nigerian government and the oba of Benin, whose family ruled the historical Kingdom of Benin from which they were looted, claimed that they owned the items. Godwin Obaseki, the governor of Edo State, where Benin City is, said he acted as a facilitator to resolve the dispute.
  • Ultimately, he said, the oba’s family, Nigeria’s museum commission and the government of Edo State agreed to join a trust together, with independent directors that oversee the construction and operation of the new museum.
  • the agreement allows for 168 pieces chosen by Nigeria’s museum commission to remain in Germany “so that Benin’s art can be shown to the world.” The approximately 350 other bronzes that were part of the Berlin museum collections will be transported to Nigeria once the pavilion is completed.
  • Edo Museum of West African Art
  • It remains unclear who will pay for the shipment and insurance of the remaining items in Germany, and he noted that the bronzes’ storage and upkeep will come at a considerable cost, including electrical bills for climate control.
  • Elizabeth Merritt on 21 Dec 22
     
    The foreign minister's trip is the culmination of a yearslong process that upended Germany's approach to handling cultural items unjustly obtained during the colonial period. It is also part of a pioneering model for large-scale restitution, in which ownership is swapped before any artifacts change hands. Crucially, that approach allows for items to be restituted even if the country of origin does not yet have the facilities to store and exhibit them.
Elizabeth Merritt

The NFT Ecosystem Is a Complete Disaster - 0 views

www.vice.com/...osystem-is-a-complete-disaster

NFT

shared by Elizabeth Merritt on 02 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • Vignesh Sundaresan, a collector known as “MetaKovan” who purchased the $69 million Beeple NFT that touched off one of the earliest hype cycles around the digital assets. MetaKovan is the financier of Metapurse, a Singapore-based investment firm that earlier this year listed its mission as to "democratize access and ownership to artwork." Metapurse has bought 20 Beeple NFTs, four virtual museums, a soundtrack, and consolidated it all into an "NFT bundle" that offers fractionalized ownership through 10 million B20 tokens. Beeple, as it turns out, happens to be a business partner of MetaKovan and owns 2 percent of all B20 tokens, while MetaKovan owns another 59 percent.
  • a landmark October study published in Nature analyzing 6.1 million trades encompassing 4.7 million NFTs since 2017: the top ten percent of traders account for nearly 90 percent of all transactions, this group trades 97 percent of all NFTs at least once, and the greatest predictor of any NFT’s value isn’t its appearance but its previous price points.
Ruth Cuadra

In the future you will own nothing and have access to everything - 1 views

boingboing.net/...e-future-you-will-own-not.html

future living access ownership

shared by Ruth Cuadra on 15 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Ruth Cuadra on 15 Jul 16
     
    Sign me up! I'm ready to own nothing and have access to everything. Are you?
Elizabeth Merritt

Human bones, stolen art: Smithsonian tackles its 'problem' collections - The Washington... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...onian-collection-policy-update

repatriation collections benin collections policy

shared by Elizabeth Merritt on 28 Jul 22 - No Cached
  • a new collections policy that requires Smithsonian museums to collaborate with the communities represented by their holdings and to return or share ownership of items that might have been previously stolen or acquired under duress.
  • The policy requires human remains “be treated with dignity and respect, as those once living, and not objectified as a scientific resource.”
  • As Smithsonian officials celebrated the deaccessioning of works held by its African Art museum, they ignored another 21 Benin sculptures in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History
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  • One floor above the African exhibit, which opened in 1999, the bones of Robert Kennicott, the famed Smithsonian explorer who once lived in the Castle, are on view.
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