Art and/or Ethnographica?
The Reception of Benin Works from 1897–1935
Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch
T
oday’s museum visitors often assume that African art objects were collected by ethnographic
museums because early collectors were blinded
by racial prejudice and could not see these
works as art. However, in some cases African
works were accepted as “art” from the beginning of their collection history, even when collected by ethnographic museums. Benin court art provides a useful test case
for the reception of African art because this corpus conforms
to many of the nineteenth century’s standards for art: mimetic
naturalism, the use of “high art” materials like cast bronze1 and
ivory, and a courtly provenance dating back to the sixteenth century (Fig. 1). Bronze plaques, figural sculptures, carved ivory,
and other pieces from Benin were universally praised for their
superior workmanship from the first European visits to the
Kingdom in the fifteenth century until their sale at auction
in 1897.2 Acknowledged by many buyers and dealers as highly
accomplished works of incredible aesthetic merit, and referred
to as “art” by many observers, the Benin pieces were exclusively
purchased by ethnographic museums until the 1930s, when
American art collections began buying them from French dealers (Paudrat 2007:238). This article explores why ethnographic
museums dominated the early collection of Benin art, and how a
German ethnographer, Felix von Luschan, paved the way for the
reception of Benin objects as “art” in the United States.
Defining an “ethnographic object” versus an “art object” is a
task that has concerned scholars for decades.3 For the purpose of
this article, however, art is defined as an object that speaks to the
viewer due to its expressive achievement and aesthetic appeal.
In contrast, an ethnographic object forms a locus for speech; it
is an object that documents the conversation among producers, users, and scholars about its intended use and surround-
22
|
african arts winter 2013 vol. 46, no. 4
ing cultural beliefs. These theoretical categories may of course
overlap; some objects carry the unique aesthetic value assigned
to art and yet also function as evidence of cultural practices.
However, art objects stand apart as works that can be appreciated for their visual interest whether or not contextual information is available. For example, within this discussion, the Curator
of the Berlin Ethnographic Museum, Felix von Luschan, refers
to the beauty and high craftsmanship of Benin bronze plaques
and carved ivories, showing that they are clearly considered art
objects, while his discussion of fishing nets and knives from
Micronesia collected in the same period refer to their cultural
significance alone, and not their aesthetic address to the viewer.4
ColleCtion History
In contrast to the many African art objects in Europe that were
collected over a period of decades by traders, ethnographers,
and missionaries, the Benin pieces became commercially available in a single moment as the result of military conquest. Oba
Ovonramwen of Benin (r. 1888–1897) signed a trading agreement with the British in 1892 that allowed them preferential
access to trade. Once he discovered the threat to Benin sovereignty that the treaty represented, however, Ovonramwen ceased
compliance with the terms. During the fall of 1896, the British
felt increasingly thwarted by the Oba’s trade policy. When the
Consul-General, the ranking officer in the British Protectorate,
left for a visit home, his young assistant, Lieutenant and Acting
Consul-General James Robert Philips, seized the opportunity to
win recognition from the bureaucracy in London and brought
an unarmed group of eight men to negotiate with the Oba on
January 3, 1897. Seeing the British and 200 of their retainers on
the road, the Oba’s messengers and an Itsekiri chief told them to
retreat, as Benin was celebrating the holy period of Ague. The
1 Plaque depicting a warrior
Igun Eronmwon (Royal Brass-Casting Guild), Benin
City, Nigeria, 16th century
Bronze; 48 cm x 34 cm
Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Accession
Number III.C.7657.
Photo: MARtIN FRANKEN
Felix Von Luschan, Curator of the Ethnologisches
Museum in Berlin, was one of the first curators to
recognize the “art status” of Benin works. this
plaque was one of his earliest Benin purchases; the
museum currently owns more than 580 artworks
from the kingdom.
British refused, and a Benin unit proceeded to defend the city
by force. Only two British men and a small number of the African retainers survived. By February 1897, the British assembled
a retaliatory force of more than 1,500 men and seized the city.5
Upon entering the King’s court, the British officers were
shocked to find more than 900 bronze plaques in a storage room
and a number of finely cast heads on the altars throughout the
palace, in addition to a large number of carved ivory tusks. The
British collected all they could, assigned some objects to the
men who led the retaliatory force, and shipped the rest to London (Fig. 2). By August 1898, most of the seized ivory and bronze
works were sold in large public auctions. While the Foreign
Office allowed the British Museum to keep only 200 pieces, Dr.
Felix von Luschan, acting for the Berlin Museum of Ethnography, eventually collected more than 580 Benin works. He quickly
mobilized German diplomatic missions abroad and Hamburg
trading companies based in Lagos to buy up any and all Benin
works remaining in Nigeria, acquiring 263 works in this manner
(Plankensteiner 2007:34). By 1901, nearly all available Benin art
was swept into public and private collections in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria (Völger 2007:217).
Scholarship on the collection history for Benin art objects
has already explored why they were considered ethnographic
specimens in Britain. In Annie Coombes’s 1994 book Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Public Imagination
and her subsequent 1996 article, “Ethnography, Popular Cul-
ture, and Institutional Power,” she traces the reception of Benin
objects in the British Museum from 1897 through the early
1990s. Coombes’s work documents how racism effected the segregation of African art from art institutions. Parsing derogatory
statements about Benin culture and the art objects themselves
in newspapers and scientific journals of the day, Coombes provides evidence of the previously assumed European prejudice
towards African art. She notes that all writers, from 1897 through
1910, referred to their shock at the quality of Benin workmanship and their surprise at finding such pieces in Africa (1994:61).
Coombes’s efforts untangle the web of popular culture, pseudoscience, evangelism, and diplomatic policies that contributed
to racist views. She convincingly argues that such racism was a
politically expedient method of cajoling British popular support
for colonialism and military action in Africa.
Excepting this useful examination of British colonial and cultural institutions, however, the primarily ethnographic classification of the Benin corpus is rarely questioned in the broader
bibliography on Benin.6 This elision is likely a result of the larger
context of African art collecting practices. Most other African
art pieces were collected during ethnological or zoological expeditions, like the Jacobsen collection in German museums, celebrated for its aesthetic appeal, or the Luba sculptural bowls
gathered during a Museum of Natural History mission to Northern Congo (Fig. 3). In this broader collecting context, it is simply
assumed that nineteenth and early twentieth century schol-
vol. 46, no. 4 winter 2013 african arts
| 23
2 Plaque depicting four men in front of the palace
Igun Eronmwon (Royal Brass-Casting Guild), Benin City,
Nigeria, 16th century
Bronze; 55 cm x 39 cm
British Museum # 1898,1-15.46
Photo: © tRuStEES oF thE BRItISh MuSEuM
this plaque is one of the objects removed to Europe
after British forces took Benin City in February, 1897.
Along with a similar plaque held in Berlin, this is one of
the few records of how the Benin plaque corpus was
originally installed. No museum currently mimics the
depicted installation pattern—vertical installation of
four plaques attached to a post, with a small distance
between the posts.
ars suffered from racist myopia and were unable to see the art
among the quotidian nets, baskets, and other cultural artifacts
collected in Africa. The Benin pieces, however, were not donated
as part of a larger collection of artifacts, but sold at auction and
therefore available to any museum.7 This singular introduction
to the market asks us to explore why the sole institutional purchasers were ethnographic museums.
Coombes’s discussion of the British collection of Benin works
in particular bears light on the complicated reception of these
objects. She argues that the British used Benin’s reported “savagery” as an expiating rationale for what was essentially a war
over trade. Due to such narratives in the popular and scientific
press, the British public held a negative opinion of Benin and
yet a contradictory, positive impression of the accomplishment
displayed in Benin’s bronze and ivory art objects. Coombes’s
scholarship presents a widely held thesis about Benin art works’
inclusion in ethnographic collections that had not previously
been articulated and defended. Coombes is primarily interested in such attitudes in Britain, yet she at times uses “Europe”
almost as a synonym for “Britain,” a usage that reflects common
assumptions about early twentieth century European prejudice.
Her well-researched exploration of racist values confirms common beliefs about British attitudes towards Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the height of colonialism.
However, it is precisely because of the specific, adversarial, imperial relationship between Britain and Benin that one cannot
24
|
african arts winter 2013 vol. 46, no. 4
extend her conclusions to the whole of Europe. To understand
the collection history of African art objects by ethnographic
museums, it is important to explore the intellectual and structural surrounds of museum practice beyond Britain.
When Britain sold the Benin art works in 1898, the largest
buyers were ethnographic institutions abroad. Before assuming that curators excluded these art works from art museums
based on their African provenance alone, one must explore what
nineteenth century art museums collected, how they completed
their acquisitions, and how they treated bronzes in general. By
examining the context of ethnographic collection in Germany
during the same period, a new picture emerges of the reception of the Benin bronze and ivory works. Museum development in Germany is particularly relevant to these questions, due
to the enthusiastic consumption of Benin bronzes and ivories
in Germany and Austria and the lack of a colonial relationship
with Benin that would affect collection practices. The number
of Benin works in German ethnographic collections, and the
amount spent to secure them, is staggering. The impetus for collecting Benin art in Germany, specifically in the country’s ethnographic museums, underscores the different national responses
to African art and culture across Europe.
German museum PraCtiCe in tHe nineteentH Century
The history of museum practice in Germany is closely tied to
the declining power of regional nobility in a new national arena.
In the mid-nineteenth century, German art museums were
strictly divided into three types: the kunstgeschichte or art historical museum, the kulturhistoriche or cultural history museum,
and the kunstgewerbe or arts and crafts museum. Art history
museums were considered hierarchically superior to the other
two, and the leading collections were formed by loans or donations from nobility. The Munich Glyptothek remained King
Ludwig I’s private property, for example, while King Friedrich
Wilhelm III’s collection founded the Berlin museums. The cultural history museum first appeared in Nuremburg, after the art
historical museums were founded, and offered a glimpse into
daily life of the past through objects arranged by function in a
room-by-room household setting. The arts and crafts museum
was the youngest type, appearing first in 1863 in Vienna and 1867
in Berlin. This museum type celebrated traditional handicrafts in
an increasingly industrial age in order to promote the continued
production of high-quality trade items within the region. Ethnographic museums were established in the same period, open-
3 Figure with bowl
Luba peoples, Eastern Province, Democratic Republic of
the Congo, late 19th-early 20th century
Wood, beads; 37.5 cm x 19 cm x 31 cm
American Museum of Natural history Anthropology Collection Catalog No: 90.0/ 2423 AB.
Photo: DENIS FINNIN, © AMERICAN MuSEuM oF NAtuRAL hIStoRy
this bowl was collected during herbert Lang and James
Chapin’s 1909–1915 expedition to northeastern Belgian
Congo. Although the purpose of their trip was primarily
to collect zoological and anthropological specimens, the
sociocultural value of art objects like this one ensured that
they were also collected.
ing in 1868 in Munich and 1869 in Leipzig. In relocating objects
from noble collections to the new museums, the collections were
strictly divided along a hierarchy that privileged painting and
sculpture over fine decorative arts, high-quality handicrafts, and
ethnographic objects (Joachimides 2001:17–20).
The wealth of material from noble collections created a surfeit of works and a confusing panoply of media and styles. To
manage the vast collections, benefactors and their agents firmly
divided “art” from “kultur” and “kunstgewerbe” objects, with
“ethnographic” objects often sent to the kunstgewerbe museums in the absence of a dedicated ethnographic institution. Art
museums embarked on de-accession campaigns and quickly
donated all non-painting and non-sculpture works to the other
museums within the city. Ludwig I’s collection is an example of
the great heterogeneity of items kept in noble storerooms; these
works, whether acquired by purchase or as gifts, were divided
among many museums. His antique sculpture and modern
paintings were given to a purpose-built “art museum,” paintings and antique vases in a second purpose-built building, and
all antique and post-antique “small items,” furniture, prehistoric
objects, ethnographic objects, medieval sculpture, Egyptian art,
and weapons were placed in a separate, repurposed building.
Berlin followed a similar program, giving the prehistoric, Egyptian, and archeological items to the ethnographic collection in
the Royal Prussian Art Cabinet in 1855 and placing the remainder of the royal collection in the Kunstgewerbe museum in 1875
(Fig. 4) (Joachimides 2001:26–27).
The first generation of art museum curators and caretakers
effected this strict and rapid categorization of their inherited
collections. The next generation, however, was composed of
academically trained experts with a specific goal for collection
management and completion. Following the theories of Anton
Spring, a professor at the University in Bonn from 1860, this
group envisioned art museums as educational environments that
provided a clear historical trajectory of art, illustrated through
the exhibition of at least one example of every major master or
school related to the existing collection.8 By the 1870s, most art
museums had defined “buy” lists that would fill perceived gaps
in this chronological collection method. Surrounded by an overwhelming number of objects, art museums were only purchasing items in accordance with these collection priorities, and were
not collecting art works from contemporary masters or other
European art traditions that were not already represented in the
museum’s collection (Joachimides 2001:25).
In contrast to art museums’ winnowing efforts in the late nineteenth century, ethnographic museums expanded their collections
in this period. German ethnographic collections were considered
the best in the world from their inception through World War I.
Two trade capitals, Hamburg and Leipzig, and two historically
powerful cities, Berlin and Munich, held the most impressive collections. Throughout the formative period of the ethnographic
museums, in the last quarter of the century, German ethnologists
played on regional competition to gain significant funding from
local elites. Germany only merged into a modern nation in 1871,
and the competition for regional supremacy within the country fed the development of world-class scientific facilities, as the
ethnographic museums were considered. In his book Objects of
Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany (2002), H. Glenn Penny argues that ethnographic museums
became signifiers of wealth and modernity that allowed German
cities to productively compete within the new nation.
Combined with the assumption that cultures were rapidly
being wiped off the planet by the expansion of trade,9 regional
competition ensured that German ethnographers could access
significant funding from influential backers. Ethnographic
museums enjoyed ever-increasing budgets from 1870 onward10
and enjoyed all-encompassing acquisitions policies. Founded by
self-taught enthusiasts, the ethnographic museums encouraged
a highly aggressive acquisitions strategy that sought to buy now,
trade later. The ethnographic museum was intended to provide a
“birds-eye view” of world culture so that comparisons and similarities could be conveniently explored under one roof—thus
vol. 46, no. 4 winter 2013 african arts
| 25
4 A view of the National Gallery in Berlin in 1903.
the artworks exhibited are marble sculptures, such
as Reinhold Begas’s Mercury and Psyche (background left), and large-format paintings.
Photo: © BERLIN / NAtIoNAL GALLERy / WALDEMAR tItzENthALER / ARt RESouRCE, Ny
ensuring that any cultural product “belonged” in the museum’s
purview. Most collections were originally intended to include
German objects as well as those from more exotic locales in
order to further enable “scientific” exploration of cultural linkages (Penny 2002:41).
When the Benin corpus hit the market in 1898, the German
museum world included art museums aiming to shrink and
narrow their collections and ethnographic museums with huge
budgets ready to buy any and every object offered to them. In
this context, it was structurally impossible for Benin bronzes and
ivories to enter art institutions. The organizational strategy of
German art collections would not admit any small bronze object
to the art gallery, whether Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise panels
or the finest bronze hydrae of the ancient Greeks. Art galleries
were reserved for monumental sculpture and paintings alone.
In this strictly divided system, all bronze art works belonged in
kunstgewerbe museums. The question in the period, then, was
not whether Benin objects belonged in kunstgeschichte, or art,
museums, but whether they belonged in kunstgewerbe museums.
As described above, ethnographers and art historians viewed
the kunstgewerbe museum as a third-rate institution filled with
the odds and ends of imperial collections, in comparison to the
cosmopolitan reputation of celebrated, scientific ethnography
museums. Felix von Luschan, then the Assistant Director of the
Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, took charge
of the acquisition of Benin works for the Museum (Fig. 5). Von
Luschan and his peers argued vigorously that the Benin bronzes
belonged in his institution and not a kunstgewerbe museum. He
wrote that the objects “unquestionably belong in an ethnographic
museum” (Penny 2002:75; emphasis in original). His letter was
addressed to Justus Brinkmann, the Director of the Kunst- und
Gewerbemuseum of Hamburg. In the context of this letter—and
in this period in history—von Luschan does not seek to privilege
the Benin works’ ethnographic status above their aesthetic sta-
26
|
african arts winter 2013 vol. 46, no. 4
tus; rather, he is positing that the Benin pieces belong in the au
courant, scientifically valid space of the ethnographic museum
and not in the confusing amalgamation of the less prestigious
kunstgewerbe type. Indeed, von Luschan’s biggest patron and
supporter readily noted the Benin objects’ status as art. In a
series of letters agreeing to support von Luschan’s acquisition of
the Benin pieces at any cost, Hans Meyer wrote, “It is actually a
riddle to me, that the English let such things go. Either they have
too many of them already or they have no idea what these things
mean for ethnology, cultural history and art history” (Penny
2002:75; emphasis added). Kunstgewerbe museum curators were
willing to accept the Benin bronzes into their collections, but
ethnographic museum curators like von Luschan viewed such
plans as a slight to the objects.
German and British approaches to the Benin pieces differed not
only in their financial ability to acquire pieces, but also in their
display context. In the largest British collection of Benin works, at
the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Lieutenant-General Augustus Pitt-Rivers arranged all of his African pieces in a “chronological” order
based on their perceived sophistication. Pitt-Rivers believed that
ethnographic objects proved the Darwinian concept of cultural
evolution, and his collection was arranged to highlight the technological “advancement” of the cultures exhibited. In Berlin, however, von Luschan displayed objects geographically. Following the
Humboltian schema of a unified human history, the first German
ethnologist, Adolf Bastian, and his peers actively avoided discussions of evolutionary progress (Gerbrands 1987:16–23). This difference in theory may seem trivial from the vantage point of the
twenty-first century, but the underlying motives are vitally important to understanding the collection history of Benin art. The British collections aimed to prove an assumed theory about cultural
advancement, while the German collections sought to exhibit
similar objects and patterns across all cultures. The Pitt-Rivers
Museum and the Smithsonian Museum, in Washington DC,
both used selected artifacts and art objects in a didactic arrangement meant to prove existing (Darwinian or Mosaic) theories of
human development (Penny 2002:34). In contrast, German ethnographic museums were compared to laboratories, where scholars and the public could make empirical observations that would
contribute to a new understanding of human history (ibid.). These
approaches suggest a fundamental divide in the estimation of the
objects and a greater willingness in Germany to recognize “art”
from distant cultures.
It is difficult to judge the personal motivations of von Luschan
or his peers, or to guess whether they considered Benin artists
or courtiers fully equal to themselves. Although his actions as
an ethnographic collector may have accelerated the destruction
of other cultures, in one of his last works von Luschan asserted,
The whole of human kind is composed of only one species: Homo
sapiens. There are no “savage” people, there are only people with a
culture that differs from ours. The distinguishing qualities of these
so-called “races” essentially originated due to climatological, social,
and other environmental factors (Völger 2007:217).
Despite this enlightened statement, it is impossible to reconstruct von Luschan’s personal beliefs. Yet it is abundantly evident
that sheer racism (cultural or individual) was not the sole reason that the Benin bronzes were collected exclusively by ethnographic museums in Germany. Hailed as the most naturalistic,
technologically advanced, and commercially valuable pieces to
come out of Africa in the nineteenth century—with a full and
respected courtly provenance—modern art historians see the
failure to recognize these objects as artworks as a damnable
symptom of cultural elitism, or worse. Yet the financial and spatial constraints of German art museums in the period, as well as
the German’s period definition of “art,” provided as great, if not
a greater, barrier to Benin objects’ inclusion in art galleries. No
bronzes appeared in the most prestigious—or next prestigious—
art museums in Germany in the nineteenth century, whether
of Greco-Roman, modern German, or African origin. Bronzes
simply did not qualify as fine art. Combined with the availability
of ready financial support, available space, and a wide-open collection policy, in the German museum system, the ethnographic
or kunstgewerbe museums were the only logical places for Benin
artwork in the period. Given this history, the decision to collect
Benin bronzes in the fashionable, cutting-edge ethnographic
museums should be appreciated as a testament to early twentieth
century esteem for these works. Von Luschan’s writings and collecting history provide a useful case study. Despite his position
as the curator of an ethnographic museum, von Luschan and his
patrons never failed to consider the Benin works as art.
knew that ethnographic artifacts from Oceania were sought after
in Europe, and this led to a commercial run on artifacts which
were often gathered without proper documentation. Von Luschan was appalled at these acts and complained bitterly about
both the loss of contextual information and the rising prices of
the gathered objects. He argued that an object without proper
documentation is nearly worthless because it fails to advance
ethnographic knowledge of a people:
My publication [on Matty Island, published in 1895] induced Mr.
M. Thiel, representative of the Juluit company in Matupi, to entrust
one of his captains with the task of forming an ethnographic collection. Unfortunately, this man completely misunderstood his task and
shipped out a vast, truly overwhelming mass of spears and clubs, all
almost without exception types I had previously published; but he
neither collected nor observed anything that would somehow allow
us to get any closer to resolving the scholarly question of the origins
of the Matty Islanders; we still know next to nothing about these people; … the complete, immense, and, in the history of Ethnography,
the most outrageous plundering of the island leaves us without any
scholarly results (Von Luschan 1897:71).11
This complaint about the worthlessness of Thiel’s large collection reflects concerns about ethnographic practice and pricing (Buschmann 2000:70). Through his objection to Thiel’s
high prices and his lack of interest in more objects of a given
“type,” von Luschan reveals that he saw the Micronesian artifacts as mere commodities—interchangeable objects that could
be obtained from a number of providers (Fig. 6). In this interchange, one Micronesian basket or weapon was not viewed as
any better or more interesting than another; von Luschan saw
a limit to the number that should have been collected before
reaching redundancy.
5 Felix von Luschan in his youth. Ethnologisches
Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung
Preußischer Kulturbesitz. unknown Photographer.
Von lusCHan and Benin
Von Luschan worked tirelessly to acquire Benin bronzes
and ivories for the Berlin Volkerkunde Museum, among other
objects. His purchasing history in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries confirm his estimation of the Benin works
as unique masterpieces—in short, art—and not interchangeable artifacts. When comparing von Luschan’s Micronesian purchases with those from Benin, for example, a marked difference
in attitude towards purchase price becomes evident. Traders
vol. 46, no. 4 winter 2013 african arts
| 27
However, when discussing the purchase of the Benin objects, it
is clear that von Luschan and his donors are talking about unique,
inherently valuable works of art. Von Luschan wrote letters to the
German consulate in Nigeria and to major German firms asking
them to purchase any Benin bronze plaques, no matter where they
found them, without regard to cost (von Luschan 1919:8). As he
later described his efforts, von Luschan wrote:
Under the impression of this Auction, which I had only heard of
by chance, and to which I traveled immediately, at the last possible
moment, I sent a dispatch from London to the German Consulate
in Lagos with the request to buy Benin antiquities for the Berlin
Museum, “whatever is within reach, and without any consideration
of the price” (von Luschan 1919:8).12
This frantic effort to purchase the bronzes and ivories on sale in
London 1898, and his directive to Lagos, proves that von Luschan
marked out the Benin works as worthy of special treatment. The
desire to purchase any available Benin work suggests that each
individual item was valuable for its own unique expression. Von
Luschan’s experience of Benin art to that date must have impressed
upon him the singular nature of each one of the 900 plaques in
the bronze corpus, each statuette, and each ivory tusk. The Benin
works were not a commodity subject to negotiation, an exchange
that involves the risk of losing the object at hand. His willingness
to pay any price is proof of the inherent, inalienable value of each
individual object—a symptom of its art value.
After the initial flurry of purchases, von Luschan continued
to promote the status of the Benin art objects more than any
other scholar. His 1919 book Die Altertuemer von Benin includes
889 illustrations of items held in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, and
Stuttgart as well as works in private and public collections in
Britain. Von Luschan plainly states his admiration for the works
and their importance for cultural and art historical questions.
He unfailingly refers to the Benin pieces as “kunstwerke”—art
works—and their makers as “kunstler,” or artists. In the introduction, von Luschan also famously compared the success of
Benin’s bronze-casting technique to Benvenuto Cellini:
These Benin works notably stand among the highest heights of European casting. Benvenuto Cellini could not have made a better cast
himself, and no one has before or since, even to the present day.
These bronzes stand even at the summit of what can be technically
achieved (von Luschan 1919:15).13
Von Luschan’s compliment was not idly selected from the
canon of great Renaissance masters. Cellini, a sixteenth century
Florentine artist famous for the technically difficult sculpture of
Perseus with the Head of Medusa (Fig. 7), promoted the act of
casting as an art form in and of itself, one that spoke to the genius
of the artist. Many artists in Renaissance Florence employed
6 Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus Holding the Head of
Medusa (1554), displayed in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. Cellini and his patron were concerned about the
artist’s ability to simultaneously force the molten brass
into the main figure and the head of Medusa, which is
raised above Perseus’s body. In his autobiography, Cellini
suggested that only the rear heel might not be filled during the casting process, and amazed Cosimo de Medici
when his statue was completed almost without flaw.
28
|
african arts winter 2013 vol. 46, no. 4
craftsmen to cast their compositions, but Cellini insisted on conducting the casting himself. Duke Cosimo I of Florence, Cellini’s patron, repeatedly argued that the Perseus could not be cast
whole, due to the height of the statue and the distance between
the head of the Medusa and Perseus’s head. Yet the artist refused
all assistance from a professional caster, a resource repeatedly
urged on him by his patron (Cellini 1969:411, 415, 434).
In his infamous autobiography, he explained the great stress
and difficulty of casting this renowned work and equated the
creation of Perseus to resurrection from the dead. When Cellini
had finished the mold and was ready to pour in the bronze, an
effort he claimed to have undertaken despite a driving rain storm
and a fire in his home caused by the furnaces, he was seized by
a sudden fever and instructed his workmen to continue the job;
upon hearing their report that it was impossible, he rose from
his bed and continued the job himself. As the metal liquefied,
Cellini reports: “Then, knowing I had brought the dead to life
again, against the firm opinion of those ignoramuses, I felt such
vigor fill my veins, that all those pains of fever, all those fears of
death, were quite forgotten” (1969:440). As the mold filled, Cellini evoked Christ’s resurrection when he
cried aloud, “O God! Thou that by Thy immeasurable power didst rise
from the dead, and in Thy glory didst ascend to heaven!”… even thus in
a moment my mold was filled; and seeing my work finished, I fell upon
my knees, and with all my heart gave thanks to God (Cellini 1969:441).
7 Installation view of the exhibition, “African
Negro Art.” March 18, 1935 through May 19,
1935. the curator’s decision to place African art
objects in the “white box” of the art gallery, instead
of in the crowded profusion of many early 20th century ethnographic museums, allowed viewers to
appreciate the African objects as art.
Photo: thE MuSEuM oF MoDERN ARt, NEW yoRK. DIGItAL
IMAGE © thE MuSEuM oF MoDERN ARt/LICENSED By SCALA
/ ARt RESouRCE, Ny
Once completed, Cellini reports that the Duke and the population of Florence, including foreign visitors, recognized the glory
of the statue, acknowledging that it had fulfilled the Duke’s original prediction upon seeing the model—that once completed,
Cellini’s statue would outshine all those on the Florentine piazza,
even Michelangelo’s David and Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes
(Cellini 1969:397–441).
This reference to Cellini, therefore, is a knowing comparison on
von Luschan’s part, one that is heavily laden with ideas of quality
and near-miraculous levels of craftsmanship. By invoking Cellini,
he gives Benin sculptors credit for daring composition as well as
superior fabrication of the works. His comparison places Benin
artists over the most celebrated masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including the Renaissance art heroes Lorenzo
Ghiberti, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Verrocchio. In another
telling comparison, during von Luschan’s discussions of the Portuguese “busts” on the corners of the plaques, he compares their
inclusion to the busts of Pylades and Clytemnestra on a celebrated
Orestes Vase published by Baumeister (von Luschan 1919:86). Von
Luschan’s choice of comparanda reveals his implicit ranking of
Benin art with the most celebrated periods of European heritage:
Greco-Roman antiquity and the Renaissance.
Von Luschan was, of course, an ethnologist by training. His
catalogue of the Benin works is also divided into chapters and
subsections that emphasize clothing, weapons styles, and the
flora and fauna illustrated in the art works. These categorical divisions allow him to consider the cultural information
that can be gleaned from the successive illustrations of a “type.”
But this does not contradict his estimation of the pieces as art.
Through his consistent reference to Benin works as art and casters as artists, and his use of celebrated European comparanda,
von Luschan’s text became a testament to the technical and aesthetic accomplishments of the Benin corpus. The institutional
framework of the ethnographic museum did not, in this period,
hinder von Luschan and his supporters from recognizing and
celebrating Benin art works. It is von Luschan’s voice—insistent,
unambiguous, and credible—that effectively promotes the Benin
bronzes and ivories as artworks to the Euro-American world.
The influence of his 1919 publication is most clearly espoused in
the first commercial catalogue of Benin art in the United States,
published for a sale held in the fall of 1935.
In the spring of that year, the Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA) was the first museum to show Benin pieces in the
United States, during its “African Negro Art” exhibition (Paudrat
2007:238). Held in New York and toured across the country that
summer, the MoMA show represented a watershed moment in
the American reception of African art. Although Benin works
were already held in American ethnographic collections by 1935,
the splashy MoMA show unequivocally presented these works as
art through their display context (Fig. 8). The well-known formalist presentation of the installation at MoMA highlighted the
aesthetic achievements of the Benin artists, overshadowing the
cultural or ethnographic value of the objects in order to highlight their formal qualities. This strategy made a persuasive argument that audiences should view the many African pieces as art,
and MoMA’s respected name provided a kind of imprimatur for
the unfamiliar collection.
The MoMA show contained a large contingent of Benin works
loaned to the exhibition by Charles Ratton and Louis Carré (Paudrat 2007:238). Ratton and Carré’s decision to display their pieces
at MoMA was undoubtedly part of a marketing strategy for a fall
sale of Benin works at the Knoedler Gallery in New York. The
show, entitled “Art of the Kingdom of Benin,” was accompanied
by a slim, illustrated catalogue that provided large illustrations
of selected pieces. Throughout Art of the Kingdom of Benin, both
authors repeatedly invoke von Luschan as a promoter of Benin
art. The first lines of Georges-Henri Riviere’s introduction praise
von Luschan’s work and echo his strategies:
vol. 46, no. 4 winter 2013 african arts
| 29
It is not known under what conditions and at what date the ivories
of Benin, exhibited at the Trocadero Museum in 1932, have entered
into the collection of Kings of France [sic]. Is it not significant that
these precious vestiges have kept company for so many years, in the
Cabinet de Medailles of the Biblioteque Nationale, with the cup of
Chosroes, the Sassanide King, with the cameo of the Sainte-Chapelle,
and with the game of Chess of Charlemagne? Homage to the unique
beauty paid at the time when only casual allusions were made by
such chroniclers as the brothers de Bry, Dapper, Van Nyendael to the
greatness of a civilisation wich [sic] blossomed for six entire centuries
in the Kingdom of Benin. Homage which was renewed in 1919 by the
Great German scholar Felix von Luschan, when he wrote: “Benvenuto Cellini himself could not have made better casts, nor anyone
else before or since to the present day” (Riviere and Carré 1935:2).
Not only does Riviere quote von Luschan’s now famous comparison to Cellini as evidence of the high esteem deserved by
the Benin art works, but he expands on the theme. Riviere aligns
Benin art with French treasures that belonged to highly celebrated historical figures, both foreign and local.
In the catalogue essay itself, Louis Carré frequently refers to
von Luschan’s findings. He too continues von Luschan’s comparisons to European masters as a way of validating the quality of
Benin’s art, stating: “One can justly say that there is less Portuguese influence on the Benin art of the Sixteenth century than
there is Italian influence on the French art of the Eighteenth century” (Riviere and Carré 1935:7). Carré’s casual inclusion of Benin
in the concept of artistic “borrowing” within Europe removes
the distance between accepted, European art and the recently
introduced Benin works. This idea goes beyond von Luschan’s
vaunted comparanda to a new concept of parity. A decade after
the Barnes Foundation published its 1925 Primitive Negro Sculpture, which dismissed Benin art due to its “hybrid form” (Clarke
2011:87), Carré pointedly connects the art historical acceptance
of “borrowing” and “influence” between cultures. Rather than
demanding cultural purity in order to appreciate Benin artists’
achievements, he deftly weaves Benin’s relationship with Portugal into discussions of European artistic “influence.”
As Carré concludes his brief catalogue essay, he argues that
Benin should be set apart from other African art. For him, Benin
is different, and should be separated from the potentially “controversial” art status of the wooden sculptures of art nègre:
The art of Benin is far removed from the geometric stylization which,
under the name of “art nègre” became the fashion of Paris of a few
Notes
1
In numerous recent catalogues, authors note
that the Benin objects are made of brass, not bronze.
However, the art historical term for the entire category
of cuprous objects, regardless of the admixture of zinc
or tin, is “bronze,” and so that term is used throughout
the article.
2 Dmochowski (1990) conveniently includes
excerpts from all of the relevant European sources
(from the early missionaries to the 1897 military invasion) in his concise history of the kingdom. For more
information on the plaques and on Benin art more
generally, Plankensteiner (2007) provides the most upto-date source on the topic.
3 For an interesting discussion of this issue,
please see Vogel (1988). Suzanne Preston Blier writes,
30
|
african arts winter 2013 vol. 46, no. 4
years ago. It has been supposed that the essence of African art was a
geometric sculpture, more or less of indigenous nature. However, it is
the art of Benin that represents the true face of African art at its best
(Riviere and Carré 1935:8).
Carré’s argument, although dismissive of African art overall,
makes it clear that he recognizes how Benin pieces fit into the
existing art canon of precious materials and mimetic naturalism
in ways that wood sculptures did not. This argument borrows
concepts from von Luschan’s catalogue and his argument for the
exceptional, high-art status of Benin works. Indeed, throughout
the essay Carré leans heavily on von Luschan, often quoting him
as a source. He reprises and extends von Luschan’s strategies of
promoting Benin art through its originality, high quality, and
favorable comparison with European art. Carré seems to rely on
von Luschan’s status as a “Great German Scholar”—and many of
his methods—to promote the sale of Benin objects in an art gallery setting.
One could argue that the decision to promote Benin objects
as art, and not ethnographica, would have occurred eventually
with or without von Luschan, either on its own merits, or due to
the changing purchasing patterns of ethnographic and art museums. However, it is clear that von Luschan spurred this development and hastened the canonization of Benin art objects.
Readers today may have assumed that early ethnographic curators ignored or sublimated the aesthetic achievements of their
collections, but the history of German ethnographic museums
and von Luschan’s career provide a richer context for European
fin de siècle collecting. Von Luschan’s early, matter-of-fact references to artworks and artists when writing about Benin, his willingness to buy as many Benin pieces as possible at any price, and
his resonant comparison of the Benin bronzes to the most masterful casting of European art laid the groundwork for the promotion of Benin art as art in the 1930s. Von Luschan’s unstinting
promotion of Benin led the way for commercial dealers to argue
for the singularity of Benin bronzes and ivories – an argument
that is unique to art.
Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch is the Associate Curator for African Art at
the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Department Head for the Arts of
Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific Islands. In 2012, she completed
a dissertation on the dating and installation pattern of the Benin bronze
plaque corpus at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, under the
guidance of Dr. Susan Vogel and Dr. Jonathan Hay, and is currently developing it into a book manuscript. [email protected].
“Despite European modernism’s universally acknowledged debt to African art, some art historians still ask:
“Is African art really ‘art’?” (2008:18). Blier describes the
difference between anthropological “artifacts” and “art”
as a function of the viewer more than of the creator.
She also notes, “How the anthropological study of art
in Africa has differed from the art historical is not an
easy question to answer” (ibid.). The presence of such a
discussion in an introductory textbook suggests that the
boundaries between art and artifact, anthropologist and
art historian are still being drawn in this field.
4 H. Glenn Penny (2002) traces the shifting German definition of “ethnologie” in this period. The father
of Germany ethnography, Adolf Bastian, viewed this
new science as a way to understand humanity. As Penny
describes their efforts, Bastian and his followers sought
to understand the essential nature of man by uncovering the elementary ideas (Elementargedanken) underlying all traditions and social structures within a given
society (Völkergedanken) in order to better understand
social phenomena and the self. Penny examines German ethnographers’ shifting beliefs and practices from
the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century.
5 Accounts of the British Punitive Expedition
and its aftermath are included in most exhibition catalogues of Benin art. Please also see Ryder (1969) and
Egharevba (1968).
6 While Coombes’s work focuses on collection
history and reception in Britain, Völger (2007) traces
collection practices outside the United Kingdom and
explains von Luschan’s pervasive influence on the collection of Benin works in German-speaking Europe.
She posits that German collections of the Benin pieces
were largely spurred by von Luschan’s dynamic personality and his sense of personal competition with curators of other ethnographic museums (Völger 2007:213,
218). Her essay argues for greater recognition of von
Luschan’s seminal role in the collection and reception of
Benin art in Germany and Austria, but neither considers why the works were purchased for ethnographic,
and not art, museums, nor traces their reception in the
United States, the subjects of this article.
7 The British sold these objects at auction in order
to defray the cost of the war with the Benin Kingdom,
not due to an appreciation of the art status of Benin
works. However, this auction did make them available
to all museums, unlike those art objects donated to
ethnographic museums along with flora and fauna collected during expeditions overseas.
8 The Berlin Alte Nationalgalerie has a copy of
such a purchase list in their files that demonstrates the
precise specificity of the acquisitions policy (Joachimides 2001:28).
9 Penny (2002) also thoroughly documents
ethnologists’ beliefs that they were working in the
“twelfth hour” to collect material evidence of cultures
soon to be destroyed by the homogenizing influence
of European culture. Advances in transportation, communication, and trade made Europeans newly aware
of distant cultures in Asia, Africa, South America,
and Australia, but ethnographers keenly felt that the
opportunity afforded by such global connections would
also permanently change the Völkergedanken of unique
cultures. For this reason, ethnographers felt pressure to
collect all the objects they could to preserve evidence of
these threatened societies, and urged their supporters
and governments to support such work. Ethnologists
in Europe and American feared a homogenizing effect
of Euro-American culture at the turn of the twentieth
century in a way that echoes scholars’ questions about
the impact of globalization today.
10 As an example, George Hass gave 60,000 gulden
to the Hamburg Ethnology Museum in 1897, 14,690 of
which was specifically dedicated to Benin acquisitions.
As a point of comparison, Director Franz Heger’s salary
in 1897 was 3,000 gulden (Duchâteau 1994:107).
11 “Meine Publikation hatte den Vertreter der
Jaluit Gesellschaft in Matupi Herrn M Thiel veranlasst einen seiner Kapitäne mit Anlage von ethnographischen Sammlungen zu beauftragen. Leider hat aber
dieser seine Mission völlig falsch aufgefasst und zwar
ungeheure, wahrhaft erdrückende Mengen von Speeren
und Keulen von dort eingesandt, die sich fast ohne
Ausnahme an die von mir publizierten Typen anschliessen; aber er hat nichts gesammelt oder beobachtet, was
irgendwie gestatten würde, der Frage nach der Herkunft
der Matty Insulaner wissenschaftlich näherzutreten;
noch wissen wir so gut wie nichts von diesen Leuten;
nicht einmal ein einziges Haar von ihnen ist untersucht worden und keine Silbe ihrer Sprache; die ganze
ungeheure und in der Geschichte der Ethnographie
wohl unerhörte Plünderung der Insel ist also ohne
wissenschaftliches Resultat geblieben. Nur die grossen
hellebardenartigen Holzwaffen, die Parkinson aus der
Thiel schen Sammlung abbildet, sind neu. und scheinen
fast ebenso deutlich nach Japan zu weisen, wie das von
Kubary aus Pelau publizierte Bildwerk, auf dem klar
und deutlich zu sehen ist, wie ein Krokodil von einem
Affen überlistet wird. Das ist niemals mikronesisch in
dem Sinne, den wir jetzt mit dem Worte verbinden;
wie selten oder wie häufig die Spuren wirklich in Japan
einheimischer Märchen in Mikronesien vorkommen,
ist bisher nicht bekannt, aber so oft oder so selten sie da
wirklich vorhanden sind, immer wird man an direkte
Einfuhr zu denken haben, immer an wirkliche Beeinflussung durch verschlagene oder sonst irgendwie nach
Pelau gelangte Japaner Auf der Ausstellung selbst war
Matty durch eine von Stücken vertreten, die sich mit
den früher mir veröffentlichten völlig deckten.”
12 “Under dem Eindruck dieser Auktion, von der
ich nur ganz zufaellig erfahren hatte und zu der ich
gerade eben noch im letzten Augenblick hatte eintreffen
koennen, sandte ich noch aus London eine Depesche
an das Deutsche Konsulat in Lagos mit der Bitte, von
Benin-Altertuemern fuer das Berliner Museum zu
kaufen ‘was immer erreichbar und ohne Ruecksicht auf
den Preis.’”
13 “Wender wir uns nun zur Betrachtung der Technik dieser Kunstwerke, so gelangen wir zu einem der
wichtigsten Abschnitte unserer Untersuchung. Diese
Benin-Arbeiten stehen naemlich auf der hoechsten
Hoehe der europaeischen Gusstechnik. Benvenuto
Cellini haette sie nicht besser Giessen koennen und
niemand weder vor ihm noch nach ihm, bis auf den
heutigen Taf. Deise Bronzen stehen technisch eben auf
der Hoehe des ueberhaupt Erreichbaren.”
References cited
Blier, Suzanne Preston. 2008. “Introduction.” In A History of Art in Africa, 2nd ed., ed. Monica Blackmun
Visoná, Robin Poynor, and Herbert M. Cole, pp. 14–19.
Upper Saddle Rover, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Buschmann, Rainer. 2000. “Exploring Tensions in
Material Culture: Commercializing Ethnography in
German New Guinea, 1870–1904.” In Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents, and Agency in
Melanesia 1870s-1930s, ed. Michael O’Hanlon and Robert Welsch, pp. 55–80. New York: Berghahn Books.
Cellini, Benvenuto. 1969. Autobiography. Trans. Alfred
H. Tamarin and John Addington Symonds. New York:
MacMillan.
Clarke, Christa. 2011. “African Art at the Barnes
Foundation: The Triumph of l’art nègre.” In Representing Africa in American Art Museums: A Century of
Collecting and Display, ed. Christa Clarke and Kathleen
Bickford Berzock, pp. 81–103. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
Coombes, Annie E. 1994. Reinventing Africa: Museums,
Material Culture, and Popular Imagination. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
_______. 1996. “Ethnography, Popular Culture, and
Institutional Power: Narratives of Benin Culture in the
British Museum, 1897–1992.” Studies in the History of
Art 47:142–57.
Dmochowski, Zbigniew R. 1990. An Introduction to
Nigerian Traditional Architecture. London: Ethnographica.
Duchâteau, Armand. 1994. Benin: Royal Art of Africa
from the Museum Für Völkerkunde, Vienna. Houston,
TX: Museum of Fine Arts.
Egharevba, Jacob. 1968. A Short History of Benin, 4th ed.
Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.
Gerbrands, Adrian A. 1987. “The History of African
Art Studies.” In African Art Studies: The State of the
Discipline, ed. Roy Sieber, pp. 11–28. Washington, DC:
National Museum of African Art.
Joachimides, Alexis. 2001. Die Museumsreformbewegung
in Deutschland und die Entstehung des Modernen Museums 1880–1940. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst.
Paudrat, Jean-Louis. 2007. “Historiographic Notes on
the Presence of the Court Art of Benin in France and
the United States between 1930 and 1945.” In Benin
Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria, ed. Barbara
Plankensteiner, pp. 235–46. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches
Museum mit MVK und ÖTM.
Penny, H. Glenn. 2002. Objects of Culture: Ethnology
and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Plankensteiner, Barbara. 2007. “Introduction.” Benin
Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria, ed. Barbara
Plankensteiner, pp. 21–40. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches
Museum mit MVK und ÖTM.
Riviere, Georges-Henri, and Louis Carré. 1935. Art of the
Kingdom of Benin. New York: Knoedler.
Ryder, A.F.C. 1969. Benin and the Europeans. New York:
Humanities Press.
Völger, Gisela. 2007. “Curator, Trader, Benin Scholar
Felix von Luschan—An Austrian in Royal Prussian
Museum Service.” In Benin Kings and Rituals: Court
Arts from Nigeria, ed. Barbara Plankensteiner, pp.
213–26. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum mit MVK
und ÖTM.
Vogel, Susan. 1988. Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections. New York: Center for African Art.
von Luschan, Felix. 1897. Beitrage zur Ethnographie der
Deutschen Schutzgebiete. Berlin: Riemer Verlag.
_______. 1919. Die Altertümer von Benin. Berlin: Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger.
vol. 46, no. 4 winter 2013 african arts
| 31