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Digital Benin an opportunity for global dialogue

Sharing information on the Benin Bronzes in their collection, the NGA and SA Museum are thinking beyond repatriation.

15 Nov 2022

Celina Lei

Visual Arts

Details of Benin Bronzes at the British Museum, 2018. Image: Shutterstock.

A new platform, Digital Benin, brings together over 5000 objects scattered across museums around the world today to provide a transparent database of the Benin Bronzes, which were looted from the West African Kingdom of Benin by British soldiers in 1897.

The database contacted 131 museums across 20 countries to gather information about their Benin holdings, including nine pieces at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and four at South Australian (SA) Museum.

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Celina Lei

Celina Lei is an arts writer and editor at ArtsHub. She acquired her M.A in Art, Law and Business in New York with a B.A. in Art History and Philosophy from the University of Melbourne. She has previously worked across global art hubs in Beijing, Hong Kong and New York in both the commercial art sector and art criticism. She took part in drafting NAVA’s revised Code of Practice - Art Fairs and was the project manager of ArtsHub’s diverse writers initiative, Amplify Collective. Celina is based in Naarm/Melbourne.