Friday 22 February 2013

'Benin Plan of Action' for restitution

After three days of meeting between Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) and representatives of holders of Benin bronzes in foreign museums, here is what the gathering arrived at as “Benin Plan of Action”. 

The plan of action signed by the Director-General of
NCMM, Yusuf Abdallah Usman states: 


Museum professionals in Europe with holdings of Benin art collections and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments of Nigeria a scholar on copyright law and representatives of the court of Benin, met in Benin, Nigeria on the 19th and 20th of February 2013, in continuation of previous meetings in Vienna, Austria and Berlin, Germany and proposed that a Memorandum of Understanding be made between the collaborating institutions on the following issues:

1. Developing a data bank by the collaborating institutions on Benin art collections in their holdings in form of a digital archive of electronic and hard copies. This data will be submitted and made available to the general public.

2. That all collaborating institutions upon request shall have right of producing free of charge photographs of Benin art objects in the collection of collaborating institutions particularly for scholarly purposes. 

Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke and D-G, NCMM, Yusuf Abdallah Usman (centre) in a group photograph with the representatives of the foreign museums. 

3. That staff of the collaborating institutions shall have access to Benin Collections in their holdings in accordance with the existing procedures of the institutions.

4. That the National Commission for Museums and Monuments shall improve the university education of its staff working on the collections and on this basis collaborating institutions will assist in securing support for internship and scholarship for postgraduate studies on the Benin collections.

5. That collaborating institutions assist with expertise in the establishment of a conservation laboratory in Nigeria.

6. That collaborating institutions shall assist the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in developing its library and archive facilities.

7. That the National Commission for Museums and Monuments and collaborating museums shall create an enabling environment for an increased exchange of touring/travelling exhibitions for the Benin art objects and other art traditions where the European and Nigerian museum experts will work together in the planning and execution of such exhibitions.
That these individual steps are part of the dialogue which goal is to lead to the display of the objects in Nigeria.

The meeting resolved that there is a need at the next meeting to discuss:
The issue of fake Benin art objects on the international art markets and its consequences for museums, The 1970 UNESCO Convention, The publication of their inventories.

In attendance at the meeting were: Dr. Michael Barrett and Dr. Lotten Gustafsson-Reinius represented the National Museum of Ethnography of the Museums of World Culture Stockholm, Sweden Dipl. Ethn; Silvia Dolz of Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden, Staatliche Ethnographische Sammlungen Sachsen of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany; Dr. Peter Junge represented Ethnologisches Museum-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany; Dr. Barbara Plankensteiner represented Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, Austria; Dr. Annette Schmidt represented the National Museum of Ethnology of the Netherlands.

Other participants included Rosemary Bodam, Peter Odeh,  Babatunde Adebiyi, Prof. Folarin Shyllon,  Prince Edun Egharese Akenzua MFR – Enogie of Obazuwa, Chief Stanley Obamwonyi – Esere of Benin.

For West African artists, a new leap beckons in Dubai


By Tajudeen Sowole

After a recent resurgence at home and gradual inroad into the art market of the west, contemporary art from West Africa tests the waters of the Middle East.

Interestingly, the next testing ground for West African artists is the new blue-eyed boy of the 21st century’s business and leisure travel hub, Dubai. Under Marker, a sub-event of Art Dubai Fair, five artists via art advocacy organizations across West Africa will from March 20 to 23, 2013 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai be the focus of visitors. Art Dubai Fair has been rated as a major yearly international art gathering in the Middle East, with as much as 500 artists and 75 galleries from 32 countries participating every year, it attracts an estimated 22, 000 visitors. 
   
The 2013 edition of Marker, according to the organizers, is making its third appearance in the seven-year old Art Dubai Fair, and has been dedicated to art from West African. It’s Africa’s debut appearance at the fair. Although Marker appears more like an exposition and cultural contents exchanges, it could, indirectly boost the increasing value and appreciation of art West African art. In recent years, Europe, particularly the U.K has hosted several art shows, which focused African art. In fact, there is a yearly art auction, Africa Now by Bonhams, dedicated to African art.
Taiye Idahor’s Head Series (Newspaper, film cartridge and acrylic paint on wood, 61x61cm, 2012), courtesy of CCA, Lagos.
Young, up-and-coming Nigerian artist, Taiye Idahor joins Ghanaian master, Ablade Glover and others such as Soly Cisse (Senegal) Abdoulaye Konate (Mali) and Boris Nzebo (Cameroun) in what the orgnisers of Art Dubai described as exploring “the nature of evolving cities in West Africa and the way in which this change impacts society.” Designed as five artspaces, works of the artists have been selected from Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA, Lagos, Nigeria); Espace doual'art (Douala, Cameroon); Maison Carpe Diem (Segou, Mali); Nubuke Foundation (Accra, Ghana); and Raw Material Company (Dakar, Senegal). 

Instructively, Glover and Idahor, indeed, represent the dynamics of art across West Africa; each comes from the two extreme ends of generations of artists whose works are currently uplifting the status of African art. Glover is among the masters who have been celebrated over the decades and Idahor is of the new generation artists, impatiently eager to rub shoulders with the established signatures.

For example, in a Lagos art scene characterised with diverse and competitive art spaces, it could be tasking for a young artist to create an identity. For Idahor, she had twice made a statement during two group exhibitions Water E No Get Enemy and Colours and Creativity. In the African Artists Foundation (AAF)-organised Water E No Get Enemy, Idahor’s analogical view, from a life-size sculpture of a lady, indicts the mass media, particularly advertising industry for increasing exploitation of women’s fragility. For Marker 2013, Idahor’s work titled Head Series, viewed via soft copy stresses her creative incendiary in a collage form that plays around Nigerian women’s gele (head dress) identity.

Long before Lagos started its recent gradual steps towards becoming the art hub of Africa, Glover’s art was well known in Nigeria. In fact, he joined a selected group of Nigerian masters such as surrealist, Abayomi Barber; printmaker, Dr Bruce Onobrakpeya; and realist, Kolade Oshinowo, for the exhibition An Evening with the Masters organized by Terra Kulture Gallery, Victoria Island, Lagos to mark Nigeria’s 50th Independence Anniversary in 2010. During a chat, shortly after the show, Glover exuded the prospect in having young and old masters work together as he noted that there existed “a very good relationship between the masters and the younger artists”. 

Three years after, the prospect is becoming a reality, and in far away Dubai where Marker appears like a stronger forum for African artists of all generations to start a new journey. Few days ago, the Director at Art Dubai Fair, Antonia Carver, during a chat via e-mail recalled that Marker was launched in 2011, as a medium to connect arts of other places – not properly represented in international art events – with that of the UAE and the Gulf. In three years, Matker, she explained, has beamed light on “general selection of spaces from the Middle East and Asia, and then in 2012, focused on Indonesia.” However, Africa, she acknowledged, has been within that radar of the organisers. “We knew from the beginning that in 2013 we wanted to focus on an aspect of the African arts scene. And when we got into the research period, a couple of years ago, we realised that there were such incredible artspaces and artists in the West of the continent”.

Saddled with the curatorial responsibility of Marker is Bisi Silva, who works in collaboration with the five art organisations that promote the selected artists.
And typically the Nigerians’ style of celebrating their own wherever, quite some art enthusiasts and connoisseurs from Lagos have expressed interest in attending the Art Dubai Fair 2013, sources said. 

Speaking on the curatorial content, Silva noted that the flexibility of the theme has inspired the arts organisations and artists involved to a theme-friendly space. “The theme allows each contributor to approach it from a local context. At the same time, visitors to the fair will discover several common threads that link the works - the vibrant dynamics of the cities as well as the tensions that arise when the modern collides with the traditional, the urban displaces the rural and the boundaries between the public and private become blurred.”

Silva assured that Marker opens up possibilities and opportunities for artists and art organisations from West Africa to engage with their contemporaries in the Middle East and Asia. “Making their work and artists known in other regions, and creating new audiences is a strategic move for any organisation, which will hopefully result in new collaborations and partnerships.” She listed varieties of genres such as painting, photography, sound art and other experimental media as some of the works to expect at the event.

Supporting the visual contents to maximize the prospect of the fair is an interactive session, Carver disclosed. She said the session Global Art Forum “features a panel discussion on Lagos and the influence the city has had on writers and artists.” Listed among the discussants with Silva are writer Tolu Ogunlesi, sound artist Emeka Ogboh and director of Raw Material Company, Koyo Kouoh.
  Still on the visual contents, Carver said a Nigerian-born, and London-based artist, Mary Evans “has been commissioned to create a site-specific work at the fair, as part of our non-commercial Art Dubai Projects programme.”
 Untitled by Soly Cissé (pencil and acrylic on paper, 72 x 102, 2012), courtesy of Raw Material Company, Dakar, Senegal.
Really, connecting the mainstream art markets and the intellectual exchanges in art of West Africa and the Gulf appears like the ultimate goal. However, the five arts-paces seem like a starting point in bringing the rich art and culture of West Africa to the Middle East. And as artists are the focus this year, where exactly do the mainstream art galleries of West Africa – as crucial as they are – come into this exchange?  “Of course, there is a long relationship of trade and business between the Gulf and different parts of Africa. We now see increased exchange between the UAE and West Africa – and wherever there is a relationship of trade, then there is also an exchange of ideas and traditions – and so it’s an ideal time to kick-start a long-term exchange through contemporary art,” Carver explained.

Art Dubai is organized in partnership with Abraaj Capital and sponsored by Cartier.

The International Press Consultant of Art Dubai
Katrina Weber Ashour recalled that over the last six years, the fair has proven to be “the leading international contemporary art fair in the Middle East and South Asia, becoming a cornerstone of the region’s booming art community. In 2012, it welcomed 22,500 visitors and hosted 75 galleries from 32 countries.”

Ohiwerei’s Allow, a bridge across periods, themes


By Tajudeen Sowole

One of the very few Nigerian artists in the Diaspora who is still active at home, Pita Ohiwerei is back again to share the value of not being lost into the creative wilderness abroad.

Ohiwerei, whose new body of work titled Allow is showing from Thursday, March 7 to Tuesday 12, 2013 at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, has been making his art relevant in Nigeria almost every other year since he relocated to the U.S. over 10 years ago. The artist’s consistency is indeed a rare courage when most of Nigerian artists in the Diaspora have, practically, been anonymous in the home art space in the past two decades.
Happy Day, from Pita Ohiwerei’s Allow.
It would be recalled that the tumultuous political era of the June 12 1993 Presidential election annulment had an exodus of Nigerian artists moved to the U.S. and U.K.

Although Allow is Ohiwerei’s second solo exhibition in Nigeria, in the past six years, he has been home for workshops, group shows and other events where his art has contributed to the growth of the visual arts sub-division of Nigeria’s recent cultural explosion. As the Lagos art scene gets stronger every year, creating more choices for art collectors, visitors to Ohiwerei’s Allow would vividly remember the artist’s works in several group shows as well as non-profit art ventures. After his solo last Simple Pleasure in 2006, he had exhibited in nearly all the group shows of Guild of Professional Fine Artists of Nigeria (GFA); participated in Lekan Onabanjo-led art workshops sponsored by Fullworks Foundation for his Alma Mata, Auchi Polytechnic as well as Promises Kept, a fundraising art exhibition for a foundation in memory of Late art patron Sefunmi Osioke Oyiofe.

From his past theme such as Simple Pleasures, and several other group exhibitions, Ohiwerei’s soft canvas has been well pronounced. However, Allow, he said, is another period of his art, though still retaining the softness identity; it says much about the artist’s thoughts on what he explained as freedom to expand the scope of his art while making the well-established identity and signature stronger. "It's about moving beyond the familiar terrain", he stated after a break at a friend's studio in Lagos suburb, few days ago.

In 2006, the artist’s canvas strengthened his 14 years-old technique christened scratchee. For Allow, the softness of scratchee remains, but something more exciting and rhythmic has been added: it’s a patterned and textured surface, which exudes illusionary movement of the images. This much he stresses in one of the works titled Happy Day, a capture of children playing at the beach. It could have been just as common as any regular or similar depiction of children having fun, but Ohiwerei’s expressionism stirs animation of resplendence.

And as simple as the theme appears, the attraction for him, he disclosed, “was the happiness of the children, despite not being from a privileged home.” The work is, apparently, the artist’s current period of a similar version Wave Knees II (oil on canvas, 30 x 40, 2009), which is on display at one of the world’s leading art fairs, U.S-based Art Off the Main’s virtual gathering. 

Having the dual advantage of growing up in Nigeria and living in the U.S., Ohiwerei seems to appreciate certain family values back home, particularly in participatory domestic chores. In Allow, he dedicates a series titled Saturday Morning to this nostalgia, depicting youth at domestic laundry. Although the textured and patterned surface appears like Ohiwerei’s new period, but a revisit of the scratchee still comes in one of the Saturday Night Series as well as Honeymoon.

However, the softness identity of the artist, despite thickened surface of his canvas remains. This is one factor that is not likely to change in his art. In a stressful environment such as Nigeria, mostly urban like Lagos, the softness of his work, he explained “is a form of therapy to calm nerves” after the stress of a day’s work.  

When artists move from one period to another, it’s often difficult to distill progression of contents as the shadow of the past still hovers around. While noting that it’s difficult to make a drastic departure from the past, Ohiwerei added: “at this stage of my journey, my quest is to allow the works guide me each in its unique way.”

Currently based in Atlanta, Georgia, Ohiwerei is a model and inspiration for young artists who might fear that art would not pay their bills. In fact, during one of his past visits to Nigeria, he disclosed how he worked in collaboration with African Artists Foundation’s Azu Nwagbogu to use his art as inspiration to encourage the children of the less privileged people “and create another generation of artists.”

Since Ohiwerei graduated with a distinction at Auchi Polytechnic, his most prominent and perhaps longest period is the scratchee technique. Purely a palette knife work, the technique, similar to water surface breaks has brought an identity of some sort to his work. His website notes: “Scratchee creates simple, yet interesting, colour impressions that emit tingling and misty illusions. The scratchee effect gives a peculiar three dimensional visual to his landscape paintings that gives the observer the impression that one can jump right into Pita's paintings.”

Monday 18 February 2013

Refining Lines, Signs with Uzorka


BY TAJUDEEN SOWOLE
Whatever Uche Uzorka did not ask his art teachers about the dynamics of creating an art piece, the artist is pouring out in his solo art show titled Line. Sign. Symbol, currently on till February 23, 2013 at African Artists Foundation (AAF), Ikoyi, Lagos.


Largely abstract, in a mixed of drawings, flavoured with subtle painting, which appears dominant in the ink on paper works, Uzorka's new body of work basically probes into the destination or terminality of lines in art form.

Uche Uzorka's Where There is A Fire (ink on paper)
Some of the works such as Where There Is A Fire, Galaxy II, Tell Me Who I Am and Orgasm explain the artist’s depth at creating art within the context of established and emerging motifs or symbols.
 With Tell Me Who I Am, Uzorka delves into what could be described as his thought on identity crisis of people, who, in striving to belong to a trend, lose the essence and element of living. Populated with signs, except for stamp-like designs such as ‘continent’, ‘wall’ and ‘content’ all in caps, it’s of abstractive dominance.

Among the things that distort or brings misrepresentation of reality, which often make people lose their identity, is creativity, so suggests the artist.

From what he describes as ‘arrogance of adverts’, for example, which gets people to buy what they don’t really need, he notes is wastage from the deceit of the creative section of the Ad company.

If Uzorka’s motifs are covertly expressed, in faint visuals in some of the works, Orgasm, as simple as it appears is more explicit on the strength of line in making a form: the swimming of a skinned fish, towards the left of the canvas highlights the artist’s thought on what he describes as ‘mechanized’ life style of the people.

Like some artists, who, perhaps in their zeal to expand the space of thematic visuals, keep dragging art into the realm of mysticism and metaphysics, Uzorka’s work takes a leap in this direction, according to his approach to minimalism. Not exactly a new leap, as this much has been noticed in his joint assemblage with Chike Obeago, which earned the duo the top prize at the AAF/Nigeria Breweries-organised 2011 edition of the national art competition tagged, Documenting Changes In Our Nation. It was a product of 14-day workshop in Abraka, where all the 12 contestants were camped.

Whatever form his art has been, in his post-school periods, he seems to have missed drawing and paintings. So, Line. Sign. Symbol, he discloses, “is to get me back to panting, with ink.”
   
JUST in case anyone seeks an extensive engagement with Uzorka on his thought about creating art, his new body of work is backed up with quite a monologue. More interesting, perhaps in appreciating the artist’s curiosity as a student, he takes you back on a brief retrospection through his academic years.
Uche Uzorka

“Through the process of working with lines, I prepare myself to accept the position where I realise that I have to relinquish the power of not being in total control.” And for being a little bit submissive, he says, “comes a benefit, which has led to a new way of learning to rhyme to a rhythm that is not entirely mine.”

Born in 1974, in Delta State, Nigeria, Uzorka graduated from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, majoring in painting in 2001.

His practice incorporates painting while his first solo show, Uche Uzorka: The Organic, was held in October 2012 at the Goethe Institut, Nigeria in association with the African Artists’ Foundation.

Saturday 16 February 2013

Picture of Israeli military attack on children wins World Press Photo Contest

Grieving Palestinians carrying the dead of two children killed by Israeli military attack in Gaza last year

Picture of a group of men carrying the bodies of two dead children, killed after Israeli military attack, has won the World Press Photo of the Year 2012.

The international jury of the 56th annual World Press Photo Contest, few days ago, selected the picture by Paul Hansen of the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter as the World Press Photo of the Year 2012.

Hansen captured the dead children being taken through a street in Gaza City to a mosque for the burial ceremony while their father’s body is carried behind on a stretcher. Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his older brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their mother was put in intensive care. The picture was made on 20 November 2012 in Gaza City, Palestinian Territories.

The jury gave prizes in nine themed categories to 54 photographers of 32 nationalities from: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Palestinian Territories, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, USA, and Vietnam.

The members of the jury announced the winners at a press conference held at the World Press Photo office in Amsterdam on 15 February.

Comments on the winners by the jury
 Mayu Mohanna, jury member from Peru, said of Paul Hansen’s winning picture: “The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children. It’s a picture I will not forget.”

Santiago Lyon, vice president and director of photography at The Associated Press, spoke of the selection of prizewinners: “When I look at the results, as chair of the jury, I think that the World Press Photo of the Year, and all the other photos that were given prizes, were solid, stellar examples of first-rate photojournalism that is powerful, that is lasting, and that will reach whoever looks at them.”

The judging was conducted at the World Press Photo office in Amsterdam. All entries were anonymously presented to the jury, who discussed their merits over a two-week period. The jury operates independently and a secretary without voting rights safeguards the fairness of the procedure. The contest drew entries from professional press photographers, photojournalists and documentary photographers across the world. By the mid-January deadline, 103,481 images had been submitted by 5,666 photographers from 124 countries.
  The jury awarded first, second and third prizes in all categories. First-prize winners in each category receive a cash prize of €1,500. Winners of second and third prizes and those awarded an Honorable Mention receive a Golden Eye Award and a diploma. The premier award, the World Press Photo of the Year, carries a cash prize of €10,000. In addition, Canon will donate a professional DSLR camera and lens kit to the author of the World Press Photo of the Year 2012. The annual Award Days, a celebration of the prizewinners, takes place in Amsterdam from 25 through 27 April 2013.
  The prize-winning pictures are presented in an exhibition more than 100 cities in over 45 countries. The first 2013 World Press Photo exhibition opens in Amsterdam on 26 April 2013.


Friday 15 February 2013

West African art to take centre-stage at ‘Art Dubai 2013’


It is Art Dubai’s Marker programme, which explores the nature of evolving cities in West Africa through the work of upcoming and established artists, exhibiting in the Middle East for the first time

Art Dubai has announced that this year’s Marker, a set of curated concept stands located in the fair’s main gallery halls, will focus on West Africa. Lagos-based curator Bisi Silva’s curatorial concept focuses on the rapidly evolving nature of cities in West Africa and the way in which this change impacts society. She has selected five spaces to work collaboratively with their artists to produce exhibitions for Art Dubai: Centre for Contemporary Art (Lagos, Nigeria); Espace doual'art (Douala, Cameroon); Maison Carpe Diem (Segou, Mali); Nubuke Foundation (Accra, Ghana); and Raw Material Company (Dakar, Senegal). Working together with the curator and the fair, each artspace will present recent works by artists such as Soly Cisse (Senegal) Ablade Glover (Ghana), Abdoulaye Konate (Mali) Boris Nzebo (Cameroun) and Taiye Idahor (Nigeria).
Bisi Silva, Curator of Art Dubai 2013's Marker.

Marker exemplifies Art Dubai’s role as a site of discovery and cross-cultural exchange; Art Dubai 2013 sees the five artspaces from West Africa exhibiting together at an international art fair for the first time. This is the third year of Marker at the fair: following an introductory selection of galleries from across Asia and the Middle East in 2011, Marker 2012 focused on Indonesia, and resulted in the development of long-term cultural links between the Gulf and the world’s most populous Muslim country.
Art Dubai’s 2013 focus on West Africa presents a timely opportunity to reflect on the economic and cultural changes occurring in that region, and its historical and contemporary links with the UAE and the wider Gulf. According to curator Bisi Silva, the openness of the theme has encouraged the arts organisations and artists to develop dynamic booth exhibitions: “The theme allows each contributor to approach it from a local context. At the same time, visitors to the fair will discover several common threads that link the works - the vibrant dynamics of the cities as well as the tensions that arise when the modern collides with the traditional, the urban displaces the rural and the boundaries between the public and private become blurred.”

Marker 2013 will place a spotlight on art and artists from West Africa in the Middle East for the very first time. “Given the historical and rapidly growing contemporary links between the Gulf and African cities, our links with the arts communities of North Africa, plus the internationalism of the UAE arts scene, we feel that there is a great deal of mutual interest,” said Art Dubai Fair Director Antonia Carver. “By highlighting the work of organisations and artists from West Africa, we aim to not just generate more awareness but also call for increasing interaction and synergies between Africa and the Middle East in the cultural field.”

Art has been a major priority for several West African states post-independence, such as Senegal and Nigeria, both of which placed art and culture on the highest level of nation building. By the 1980s, this movement was curtailed due to increased political instability, which continued for nearly two decades. However since the beginning of the new millennium, a cultural renaissance has been kick-started mostly by private individuals and artists who are creating the platforms and programmes that foreground artistic production and presentation.

“The participation at Art Dubai opens up a number of possibilities and opportunities for artists and art organisations from West Africa, especially the opportunity to engage with their contemporaries in the Middle East and Asia, while reaching out to a wider market. Making their work known in another region and taking their artist’s work to new audiences is a strategic move for any organisation, which will hopefully result in new collaborations and partnerships,” continued Bisi Silva. “Additionally, visitors to Art Dubai will discover the diversity of artistic practice across a variety of media including painting, photography, sound art and other experimental media.”

As the leading international fair in the Middle East and South Asia, Art Dubai is committed to creating a platform whereby the world’s most influential galleries come together and engage with the booming regional art scene. Such has been its continued success that Art Dubai is expecting in excess of 22,000 visitors to the fair in March 2013.

Amid hope of restitution, Nigeria hosts foreign museums


By Tajudeen Sowole
As Nigeria hosts some representatives of holders of its looted cultural objects as part of efforts towards the return of the controversial artefatcs, the country’s dialogue or diplomatic approach is once again on the spot.  

Scheduled to hold next week, significantly, in Benin, Edo State, where the largest looting of Africa’s cultural objects took place in 1897, the meeting would be the third of its kind between the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) and some museums in Europe.
Iyoba Mask (Queen Mother), a 16th century Benin piece, speculated as Ivory, iron and copper and donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, U.S in 1972.
In 2010 and 2011, the NCMM had engaged a number of major museums in similar meeting held in Vienna, Austria and Berlin, Germany. The Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke had hinted about the scheduled Benin meeting during the repossession ceremony of some stolen Nok pieces from French Embassy, held in Abuja, few weeks ago.
Unspecified volumes of pre-19th century artefacts of Nigerian origin are currently in illegal possession of museums and individuals across Europe and the U.S. Among the most important cultural objects in this context are the two Queen Idia masks, each in the British Museum, U.K and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.

In recent years, other works of perhaps similar values had been brought into the public glare. For example, in 2010, Sotheby’s attempt at auctioning six pieces of Benin origin, including a pendant mask of Queen Idia from the descendants of Lionel Galway – the British colonial army who led the 1897 expedition – was stopped by formal protest from a Nigerian group in the Diaspora, Kayode Ogundamisi-led Nigeria Liberty Forum (NLF).

More recent in the restitution issue came last June when Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston, U.S received donation of 28 bronzes and six ivories from Mr. Robert Owen Lehman who is the heir to the vast collection of a famous American banker and collector, Philip Lehman. The late banker and great-grand father of Robert, according to sources, was one of the immediate beneficiaries of the 1897 Benin Punitive Expedition.

And as the donation also generated heated reactions from Nigerians, home and the Diaspora, NCMM sent a protest letter to MFA. The museum’s’s Associate Director of Public Relations, Karen Frascona, via email chat over Nigeria’s protest relayed the response of the museum: “Director, Malcolm Rogers responded to Mr. Usman (on August 30, 2012), that after careful deliberation, the Museum decided to accept the gift as a way of sharing this private collection, giving access to these long-hidden objects to our more than one million annual visitors.”  

Rogers, according to Frascona, “conveyed his desire that the gift inaugurates fruitful dialogue with colleagues locally and abroad, and further opportunities for cultural exchange.”

Although, as at press time, it was unclear if MFA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum were listed among the participants for the Benin dialogue, but the NCMM’s past romance with some museums seemed not to be yielding much progress in returning Nigeria’s priceless artefacts. For example, the British Museum has been involved in the retraining programme of NCMM’s staffs while Museum of African Art, New York offered similar trainings during the tour of a collaborative exhibition Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria.

Although the return to Nigeria, by France, of the stolen and intercepted Nok pieces was a laudable one, but the ultimate restitution, which Nigerians look forward to eagerly, in the return of the Idia masks, currently under incarceration in the U.K and U.S. And as NCMM keeps going into these collaborations, observers noted that the real issue of restitution has been beclouded. It has also been noted that such collaborations gives strength to the holders of Nigerian artefacts to maintain the status quo.
Iyoba Mask, 16th century AD, currently in the British Museum, U.K.
 While the Director-General of National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), Mallam Yusuf Abdallah Usman insisted that Nigeria’s “diplomatic approach” may not be on the table forever, he had argued that if Nigeria's agitation for return of its stolen artefacts must enjoy consideration of the holders, it is important to demonstrate to the rest of the world that whenever the looted works are repatriated “we would share” with other people across the world.

It is of note that under the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the prohibition of illicit trade in Cultural property as well as the 1995 International Institute for the Unification of Private Law otherwise known as UNIDROIT Convention on unauthorised exportation of cultural objects, positive gestures have been coming from some countries. Before France’s return of Nok pieces few weks ago, the Homeland Security investigation (HSI) of U.S, had in July last year, returned some Nok terracotta to Nigeria's Consulate. It was reported that the U.S. authority had been on the trail of the objects since 2011 after French customs officers spotted the statues during a routine inspection at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
 It has been observed that the UNESCO convention’s covert silence on the pre-1970 dispute artefacts could make the return of major and contentious works such as the Idia masks difficult.
A Nok terracotta of Nigerian origin (6th century BC–6th century CE, H. 38 cm (14 ¾ in.)
 currently in the Louvre museum, Paris

The Director-General of NCMM categorized the illegal movements of Nigerian artefcats into three categories: the colonial period of invading forces by imperial Britain and other western anthropologists who carried out field work in various parts of the country; collections in the 1960s and 1970s when the civil war provoked large exodus artefacts outside Nigeria; the post-civil war and current movements of work through the porous borders.
 “Within the last three years the Commission has embarked on several sensitization programme involving law enforcement agencies, media, local communities and traditional rulers at Abuja and Kaduna and also in the rural areas especially at Nok and Janjala,” Usman said.

The NCMM, he argued, has been consistent in protecting the endangered areas where artefacts are prone to illegal exportation. He disclosed that “Six hundred security personnel and craftsmen to police our heritage sites is awaiting cash backing from the Budget office.”  What he described as “a special repatriation Unit to handle issues of illicit trafficking, repatriation and restitution,” he added, has been approved by the government.