The campaign to save Benin bronzes in the world’s museums was unexpectedly boosted in Zurich last Saturday. New York lawyer Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, herself descended from Africans the Benin kingdom captured and sold, announced to a packed symposium that Swiss museums are getting it wrong: by conspiring to send their Benin artefacts to Nigeria, they are sidelining Benin’s own victims. Farmer-Paellmann, founder of the Restitution Study Group (RSG) is shown above on her visit to the British Museum’s Africa gallery in September
The Rietberg Museum’s ticket-only event was supposed to celebrate a long campaign by Benin Initiative Switzerland (BIS) to purge the country’s museums of colonial-era relics from Benin: only invited speakers must address the meeting, no questions from the floor – what could possibly go wrong? The museum had kept the event quiet and tried to exclude the RSG: but Farmer-Paellmann got a ticket anyway, and rising to her feet she told the meeting that descendants of Benin’s slaves demand a seat at the table, wherever the fate of museums’ Benin collections is being decided.
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