Benin and Liverpool | World Cultures gallery | National Museums Liverpool
Cast metal sculptures and carved ivory works from Benin City in Nigeria are highlights of the World Museum African collection and are internationally admired for their artistic and technological brilliance. Most of these works have been on display in our World Cultures gallery since April 2005, but their century-and-a-quarter-long presence in Liverpool raises troubling questions about Britain’s colonial history and its continuing legacies - questions that have not been adequately confronted in the now sixteen-year-old World Cultures Gallery display.
As part of the #WMWhereNext redevelopment plan for World Museum’s World Cultures Gallery we are working to change this by creating a more inclusive and engaging Benin display that addresses contemporary concerns of people of African descent in Liverpool, especially the violent colonial history in which the British military conquest of Benin in 1897 led to the theft and dispersal of the Edo Kingdom’s royal inheritance of commemorative altarpieces and other artworks around the world.
Benin and Liverpool is now open at World Museum.
Find out more about our World Cultures gallery here
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/w...
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