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Zetterstrom-Sharp, Johanna and Wingfield, Chris 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8127-6548
(2019)
A "safe space" to debate colonial legacy: The University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the campaign to return a looted Benin altarpiece to Nigeria.
Museum Worlds: Advances in Research, 7 (1).
pp. 1-22.
ISSN 2049-6729
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Abstract
In February 2016, students at Jesus College, Cambridge voted unanimously to repatriate to Nigeria a bronze cockerel looted during the violent British expedition into Benin City in 1897. The college, however, decided to temporarily relocate Okukor to the University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This article outlines the discussions that occurred during this process, exploring how the Museum was positioned as a safe space in which uncomfortable colonial legacies, including institutionalized racism and cultural patrimony rights, could be debated. We explore how a stated commitment to postcolonial dialogue ultimately worked to circumvent a call for postcolonial action. Drawing on Ann Stoler’s and Elizabeth Edwards’s discussions of colonial aphasia, this article argues that anthropology museums risk enabling such circumvention despite confronting their own institutional colonial legacies.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Date of Acceptance: 15/11/2019 |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Centres > Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 07 May 2020 00:04 |
| Last Modified: | 22 Oct 2022 06:06 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/75050 |
| DOI: | 10.3167/armw.2019.070102 |
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