Table of Contents

Preface

1. The Gun That Shoots Twice

2. A Theory of Taking

3. Necrography

4. Projection

5. World War Zero

6. Corporate-Militarist Colonialism

7. War on Terror

8. The Benin-Niger-Soudan Expedition

9. The Sacking of Benin City

10. Democide

11. Iconoclasm

12. Looting

13. Necrography

14. 'The Museum of Weapons, etc

15. Chronopolitics

16. A Declaration of War

17. A Negative Moment

18. Ten Thousand Unfinished Events

Afterword: A Decade of Returns

Appendix One: Provisional List of the Worldwide Locations Of Benin Plaques Looted in 1897

Appendix Two: Sources of Benin Objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (the 'first collection'

Appendix Three: Sources of Benin Objects in the former Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham ('the second collection')

Appendix Four: Current Location of Benin Objects previously in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Farnham (the 'Second Collection')

Appendix Five: A Provisional List of Museums, Galleries and Collections that May Currently Hold Objects Looted from Benin City in 1897.

References

About the Author

Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He is also a Non-Executive Director and Trustee of Museum of London Archaeology. He was awarded the 2017 Rivers Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute. He has published eight books including The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology (CUP, 2006).

Reviews

'A real game-changer'
*The Economist*

'If you care about museums and the world, read this book'
*New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020*

'Hicks’s urgent, lucid, and brilliantly enraged book feels like a long-awaited treatise on justice'
*Coco Fusco, New York Review of Books*

'Unsparing ... especially timely ... his book invites readers to help break the impasse by joining the movement for restitution.'
*CNN*

'The book is a vital call to action: part historical investigation, part manifesto, demanding the reader do away with the existing “brutish museums” of the title and find a new way for them to exist'
*Charlotte Lydia Riley, Guardian*

'A startling act of conscience. An important book which could overturn what people have felt about British history, empire, civilisation, Africa, and African art. It is with books like this that cultures are saved, by beginning truthfully to face the suppressed and brutal past. It has fired a powerful shot into the debate about cultural restitution. You will never see many European museums in the same way again. Books like this give one hope that a new future is possible.'
*Ben Okri, poet and writer*

'An epiphanic book for many generations to come'
*Victor Ehikhamenor, visual artist and writer*

'Unflinching, elegantly written and passionately argued, this is a call to action'
*Bénédicte Savoy, Professor of Art History at Technische University*

'In his passionate, personal, and, yes, political account, Dan Hicks transforms our understanding of the looting of Benin. This book shows why being against violence now more than ever means repatriating stolen royal and sacred objects and restoring stolen memories'
*Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University*

'Destined to become an essential text'
*Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times*

'Dan, your words brought tears to my eyes. I salute you'
*MC Hammer*

'A masterful condemnation and inspiring call to action'
*Los Angeles Review of Books*

'Timely'
*Nature*

'The Brutish Museums shows that colonial violence is unfinished, and as it persists in the present, it cannot be relativized.'
*Ana Lucia Araujo, Public Books*

'The Brutish Museums leaves no stone unturned'
*Financial Times*

'The Brutish Museums argues, persuasively, that the corporate-militaristic pillage behind Europe’s encyclopedic collections is not a simple matter of possession, but a systematic extension of warfare across time'
*The Baffler*

'A bombshell book'
*Los Angeles Times*

‘After this book, there can be no more false justifications for holding Benin Bronzes in museums outside of Africa’
*Africa is a Country*

‘Presents a powerful case for restitution of looted objects, and hostile responses to it highlight enduring attachments to imperialism'
*‘Counterfire’*