The Brutish Museums

The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution

By: Dan Hicks

Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe

New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020

'Essential'–Sunday Times

'Brilliantly enraged'–New York Review of Books

'A real game-changer'–Economist

Walk into any Western museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen.

Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes–a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections.

The Brutish Museums sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. Since its first publication, museums across the western world have begun to return their Bronzes to Nigeria, heralding a new era in the way we understand the collections of empire we once took for granted.

This audiobook edition, beautifully narrated by actor Ben Onwukwe, is a perfect choice for learning on the go.

©2020 Dan Hicks (P)2022 Pluto Press

Critic reviews

"A real game-changer." (The Economist)

"If you care about museums and the world, read this book." (New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020)

"Hicks’s urgent, lucid, and brilliantly enraged book feels like a long-awaited treatise on justice." (Coco Fusco, New York Review of Books)

Captivating and crucial

This was an incredible performance of important work. The untold history of the looting of Benin City and systematic murder of it's denizens through Victorian British extractive colonial capitalism was thorough and well documented in the book. The ongoing violence that is enacted by museums continuing to exhibit looted artifacts must end.