Digital Benin: Looting, Provenance and Art Market Patterns

Dr. Felicity Bodenstein, Paris

Evening Lecture in cooperation with the Forum Kunst und Markt / Centre for Art Market Studies at TU Berlin

Date: May 26, 2025, 18:15-19:45 CEST
TU Berlin Zoom-Link: https://tu-berlin.zoom-x.de/j/62192214002?pwd=GA9fIdjSWevmr40ge0QTv91PqE9YKy.1

No registration required.

This talk presents the Digital Benin project, which offers comprehensive access to the cultural heritage dispersed following the 1897 British military campaign on Benin City. Aggregating metadata from 138 institutions, the project maps over 5200 objects, more accurately known as "Emwin Arhe". It highlights the complexities of provenance research for these looted items, revealing significant gaps in documentation. The platform also provides insights into the art market patterns that facilitated their global circulation after 1897.

Dr. Felicity Bodenstein is an art historian working in Paris, specialized in the history of archaeological and ethnographic collections and the social, economic, and cultural processes involved in their creation, classification, interpretation, display, and reception during the 19th and 20th century. She is a lecturer at Sorbonne Université and a principal investigator of the digital humanities project, “Digital Benin”, financed by the Siemens and the Mellon foundation. The project has brought together data and archives from over 138 institutions. In 2022, she co-curated the exhibition, Benin. Geraubte Geschichte, (Benin. Stolen History) at the MARKK. Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt, in Hamburg. In 2022 she co-edited Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return, Berghahn Books and in 2023 she co-wrote with Maureen Murphy Pourquoi Restituer ? Le Cas Des Biens Culturels Africains. Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne.