Guide to the Benin Collection at the Penn Museum

Book excerpt: "This museum guide examines America's oldest collection of Benin art, and one of its least familiar. Ivory, brass, and wooden art from one of the greatest African precolonial states-the only sub-Saharan polity with 500 years of surviving art-are examined through contextual lenses that provide insight into the Edo people's creativity and world view. The guide also considers the collection's specific history and growth, and current plans to repatriate the artworks back to Nigeria's Benin Kingdom. For readers unfamiliar with Benin and its art, this introduces the complexities of the palace, its successive monarchs and chiefs, and interprets metaphorical motifs such as mudfish, leopards, and elephants. Artworks refer to family and court rivalries, as well as the strict court hierarchies that dictated who could use which materials and wear particular regalia. Interactions with the Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries, their impact on trade and luxury goods, and their introduction of Catholicism paint a portrait of a society that absorbed only what they found useful and flourished in both war and peace. Those conversant with Benin and African art will encounter rarities that have not been widely published. Previously unpublished archival material provides insider gossip regarding major collectors and individuals who shaped the field of African art history. The history of the call for restitution of artworks that were looted in the kingdom's 1897 British invasion is considered, as is the Penn Museum's current position regarding their repatriation. Appendices list the kingdom's monarchs, explain how to "read" images on a figurative ivory tusk that once stood on a royal ancestral altar, and guide interpretations of the style of the hundreds of plaques that once decorated the palace. Contextual photos and text references prevent an ahistorical view of this long-lived and fascinating kingdom and its rich cultural history, one that will draw in those familiar and unfamiliar alike"--