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Fifteen Colonial Thefts

A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums
Brief Description
Eloquent and powerful - Françoise Vergès Debates around restitution and decolonising museums continue to rage across the world. Artefacts, effigies, and ancestral remains are finally being accurately contextualised and repatriated to their homelands. Fifteen Colonial Thefts amplifies these discussions, exploring the history of colonial violence in... Read More
Format: Hardback
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A timely and compelling contribution to the debate around repatriation of looted African artefacts, illustrated and contributed to by African artists and writers

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Eloquent and powerful - Françoise Vergès

Debates around restitution and decolonising museums continue to rage across the world. Artefacts, effigies, and ancestral remains are finally being accurately contextualised and repatriated to their homelands.

Fifteen Colonial Thefts amplifies these discussions, exploring the history of colonial violence in Africa through the prism of fifteen African belongings—all looted at the height of the imperial era and brought to European museums.

Structured around three arenas—the battlefield, the royal palace, and the realm of the sacred—the book displays how colonial officers violently plundered Africa. It explores the meaning of those cultural artefacts at the time of their appropriation and today in an era of restitution.

With contributions from writers in Europe and Africa, including scientists, museum professionals, artists, and activists, the book illuminates the collective trauma and loss of cultural, historical, and spiritual knowledge that colonial theft engendered.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780745349527

Publisher: Pluto Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 20 August 2024

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Pluto Press

Illustration: 15 Frontispiece; 9 Halftones, black and white

Contributors:

  • Contributions by Emanuel Admassu
  • Contributions by Mnyaka Sururu Mboro
  • Contributions by Felwine Sarr
  • Contributions by Bénédicte Savoy
  • Edited by Yann LeGall
  • Contributions by Fergus Nicholl
  • Foreword by Peju Layiwola
  • Contributions by Gaëlle Beaujean
  • Edited by Sela K. Adjei

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 170.0mm

Height: 220.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 304

About the Author

Sela K. Adjei is a multidisciplinary artist with degrees in Communication Design, and African Art and Culture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. He received his PhD in African Studies from the University of Ghana, Legon. He is a lecturer at the University of Media, Arts and Communication (NAFTI). Yann LeGall is a postdoctoral researcher on the project 'The Restitution of Knowledge: Artefacts as Archives in the (Post)Colonial Museum' at the Institute for Art History of the Technical University in Berlin. He was previously a fellow at the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms at the University of Potsdam. As a member of the initiatives Berlin Postkolonial and Postcolonial Potsdam, he leads guided tours for university seminars and conferences in both cities and developed a digital audio guide on traces of colonial history in Potsdam. Peju Layiwola is an art historian and visual artist from Nigeria. She is Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Lagos. Her works can be found in Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Lagos, and in the homes of many private collectors. Her maternal grandfather was Oba Akenzua II, King of Benin, who reigned from 1933 until 1978. Layiwola has led public advocacy for the return of art works stolen from Benin during the Punitive Expedition of 1897.

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