Dining And Dancing In The Presence Of Stolen Gods And Looted Artefacts In The British Museum

Orthodox Christian Crosses, Magdala,Ethiopia,now in British Museum, London,United Kingdom.

The British Museum has announced that it will be holding a charity ball on 18 October 2025 to collect funds to further, inter alia, its international partnerships:

Internationally, we are following the same approach of deep partnerships. There have been some extraordinary successes- but this is something I am determined to do more of in order to ensure we are living up to our ambition to make the British Museum collection the most accessible and most shared in the world. We are proud of our pioneering partnerships, from the Kumasi Palace in Ghana to the History Museum of Armenia, and the historic cultural exchange next year of the Bayeux Tapestry, which mean that some of our greatest treasures from Sutton Hoo will be seen by brand-new audiences in museums in Normandy.’(1)

The Manhyia Palace is called here simply Kumasi Palace, showing little concern for the significance of Manhyia, as the principal place of all Asante and its importance in the creation and survival of the Asante as a people. We cannot expect the great London museum to be bothered by such niceties.

From being a rich people known worldwide for its riches, especially gold, Asante is now presented as an entity for which charity must be organised to support its museum. If the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Wallace Collection, and other institutions would restitute stolen Asante artefacts, we could manage our activities to gather funds. Those who stole our artefacts and refuse to return them now hold a charity ball to support us.

The British Museum announcement also declares that funds gathered will be used to support its excavation work in Benin City and support the new museum

, Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Benin City.

‘On top of this we are engaged in research projects in Girsu in Iraq, an archaeological excavation in Benin City in collaboration with the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA).’

Nigeria may wish to examine its complicated relations with the British Museum that boldly refuses to restitute Benin or other Nigerian artefacts and

still appears to enjoy relativel2021,od relationship with Nigeria so that it is undertaking excavation in Benin City and can even afford not to respond to Nigeria’s request for restitution of Benin artefacts handed over by Prof. Abba Isa Tijani on October 26, 2021 when he was Director-General of the Nigerian Commission on Museums and Monuments (NCMM). (2)

The British Museum has announced a silent auction during the Ball of 18 October, but we do not know what objects will be auctioned. Would the auction involve Asante or other African artefacts such as the Benin bronzes? We should recall that many British museums bought looted objects from auctions. We recall also that the Victoria and Albert Museum claims to have bought its Asante golden artefacts from a London auctioneer.

We know from the programme of the ball evening that the selected guests will be having dinner among the museum’s iconic artefacts. We do not know what artefacts have been chosen for this purpose. In his provocative and defiant statement in May 2025, we recall that Cullinan called the Parthenon Marbles

‘talismanic objects of the British Museum’.(3) Will they see any of the thousand human remains that the museum holds? Will the guests all feel well and have a good appetite, eating in a hall full of objects that are known to have been stolen and reclaimed by the owners, mostly former colonial subjects who were subjected to the cruel slave trade and colonialism?

Cullinan said, ‘The British Museum is a living diary of humanity, whose story is still being written. We see our collection of eight million objects as ambassadors from our shared world, each with a story to tell and with a conversation to start.’

Does Cullinan really believe all this? What would a diary of human cruelty look like if the British Museum were a diary of humanity? Ambassadors who are not free to return to their countries of origin, even when their governments and relatives request their return. The thirteen million objects in the British Museum are evidence of the oppressive might of the British Empire and its hold on the former colonies. These objects should have been returned on Independence.

How many ambassadors does the British Museum receive? Does the British Museum also send ambassadors to counties where the objects come from?

The looted objects in the British Museum remind us more of prisoners of war than ambassadors. They are prisoners of war to whom the British refuse to apply the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War 12 August 1949, which in its Article 118 provides that ‘

Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities.’ and the costs of repatriation are to be borne by the detaining power: Article 116 provides: ‘The cost of repatriating prisoners of

war or of transporting them to a neutral country shall be borne, from the frontiers of the Detaining Power, by the Power on which the said prisoners depend.’ Colonial wars ended long ago.

If we accept the analogy of ambassadors, we must give artefacts in the museums some of the rights of ambassadors as contained in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,1961. Article 29 provides

‘The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. The receiving State shall treat him with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on his person, freedom, or dignity.’

Ambassadors cannot be arrested or detained and can thus, travel freely. Keeping looted artefacts in museum storage clearly does not look ambassadorial.

We cannot describe persons as ambassadors and deprive them of elementary rights of free movement. Before museum directors describe looted artefacts as ambassadors, they may reflect whether such a designation perverts historical facts and should be avoided.

We know from Dati Diop’s Dahomey, (2024) Nii Kwame Owoo’s You hide me

(1970), and Chris Marfker’s Les_statues_meurent_aussi

that sculptures can also suffer when mishandled If the looted objects in the museum were to tell their stories, we would be confronted with the various imperialist wars that enabled Britain to carry off the precious treasures of other peoples. We would hear the woeful tales from the sack of the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860, the looting in Magdala in 1868 would appear different from stories from the Victoria and Albert Museum, the 1874 invasion of Kumase would explain why Asante cannot be happy with fake contracts of loan of her own artefacts from those who stole them. The 1897 Benin invasion would explain the immorality of a refusal to return the artefacts wrenched from the palace of Oba Ovonramwen. The British Museum is a scene of multiple brutal wars in Africa and Asia.

By sheer coincidence, the All-Party Parliamentary Group(APPG) for Afrikan Reparations is also holding its 2025 conference at Friends House, Euston Road, in London on the same day,18 October from 10 am to 5 pm. Unlike the Ball in the British Museum that sends invitation to selected rich personalities, even though Cullinan says the British Museum was designed to be open and free to all, the Reparations conference is open to all who are genuinely interested in reparative justice and will include many personalities, activists and scholars urging Britain to correct her colonial wrongs.

We were surprised that a museum such as the British Museum that derives its strength and main attraction from the diversity of its objects would impose a dress code on participants in the Ball that appears to be based on Western conception of what is fine, reflecting the underlying ideology of European universalism that is now turning to Western unilateralism, echoing ideas gaining ground on both sides of the Atlantic; the idea that if we do not look alike, have similar noses and similar physical resemblances, we cannot live together. They are trying to turn the clock back to the period before 1945 and before the creation of the United Nations.

What makes London an attractive city is undoubtedly its diversity of people and cultures. If the British Museum is ‘a place uniquely able to tell a global story of our common humanity; a place where cultures meet, across geographies and generations, where people from every corner of the earth come to visit,’ should not all cultures be represented by their customary attire? I do not know whether any Nigerians, Ghanaians, Ethiopians, or other Africans have been invited, but should they attend, they could at least wear traditional attire, thus affirming the continued validity of our traditions, despite imperialism and colonialism that tried to force us to adopt European attire. They would also thus, affirm the diversity of humankind which some people are now discovering.

The rich and the prominent persons will be dining and dancing, surrounded by our looted artefacts that the British Museum refuses to return. Is this a definite message to all who demand the restitution of their artefacts, Chinese, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Ghanaians, Greeks, Indians, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Zimbabweans, and others? The woes of all those who cry and beseech the mighty citadel in London to return the human remains of their ancestors for proper burial after a hundred years, do not seem to count and fall loudly on deaf ears. The dancing rich do not usually hear the cries of those not attending the party. The music silences all disagreeable sounds from outside.

NOTES

1. Comment-The British Museum Ball will celebrate the things that connect us https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/09/30/comment-british- museum-ballwillcelebrate-connections

The British Museum Pink Ball https://bmball.britishmuseum.org/

ArtNews, The British Museum Launches Inaugural Ball to Showcase London AND Fundraise for International Partnerships

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-museum-ball-international- partnerships-1234755018/

Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/43869d54-9630-48bd-b16a- 6ac0c908faa0

= Journal
British Museum’s ‘pink ball’ criticised by climate campaign group https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2025/10/british- museums-pink-ball-criticised-by-climate-campaign-group/

2. Nigeria sends formal letter to British Museum demanding return of looted Benin Bronzes

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prof+abbou+ISA+tIJANI+WRITES+TO+BRIT ISH+M+USEM+ON+RESTITUTION+OF+BENIN+BRONZES&atb=v314

-1&ia=videos&iax=videos&iai=https%

Kwame Opoku, Berlin Plea For The Return Of Nigeria's Cultural Objects: How Often Must Nigeria Ask For The Return Of Its Stolen Cultural Objects?

https://www.modernghana.com/news/182279/berlin-plea-for-the-return-of- nigerias-cultural-objects-ho.html

3. K. Opoku, Defiant and Provocative British Museum https://www.modernghana.com/news/1408424/defiant-and-provocative-british- museum.html

IMAGES

Members of the notorious British Punitive Expedition of 1897 to Benin, Nigeria, proudly displaying their loot. The famous Benin Rap of the Benin artist, Monday Midnitehttps:

https://www.agpnmusic.com/1897

https://www.agpnmusic.com/1897

Ivory hip mask, depicting image of Queen Mother Idia, Benin ,Nigeria , looted in the 1897 British invasion now in British Museum that refuses to return it and even refused to ‘lend’ it to Nigeria for FESTAC 77.

Rosetta Stone, Egypt, now in the British Museum, London, United Kingdom. Egypt has requested several times for the restitution of the Rosetta Stone.

Kwame Opoku, Hawass Requests Rosetta Stone: Will British Museum Make a Bold

Conciliatory Gesture? https://www.modernghana.com/news/244212/hawass- requests-rosetta-stone-will-british-museum-make-a-bo.html

Parthenon Marbles, Athens, Greece, now in the British Museum, London, United Kingdom. K. Opoku, Defiant and Provocative British Museum, https://www.modernghana.com/news/1408424/defiant-and-provocative-british- museum.html

Headless statue of the Greek river god Ilissos,Athens,Greece, sent by British Museum on loan to the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg ,Russia.

K.Opoku, To Loan or not to loan: British Museum did discuss with Greece Parthenon Marbles loan https://www.modernghana.com/news/586481/to-loan-or-not-to- loan-britishmuseum-did-discuss-with-gree.html

Orthodox Christian Crosses, Magdala,Ethiopia,now in British Museum, London,United Kingdom.

K.Opoku, Restitution Day 2024: Remembrance and Reckoning https://www.modernghana.com/news/1355754/restitution-day-2024- remembrance-and-reckoning.html

K. Opoku, To Decolonize is to decontextualize, Tristram Hunt. Should we stop asking for restitution of our looted artefacts ?

https://www.modernghana.com/news/943364/to-decolonize-is-to- decontextualize-tristram-hunt-should-w.html