Echoes and Horizons: An Exploration of Museum Culture in Benin City – In Dialogue with Benin

The museum is supposed to be the repository of cultural materials where you go and learn about the past in all its ramifications. But the main world view of the museum is the shrines, the altars dedicated to our ancestors in every home, including the great palace of the king and the great homes of the Enigi. The museum concept is that you gather materials, artifacts, be it in the round or in 2D, and you keep them in a place where people now go and learn about their past. It's from the Greek word, the muse. The three muses were three Greek goddesses who were the repository of the knowledge of the past. National Museum Benin was actually established in 1960. Of course, according to records and history that we have had, per se, it was in 1959. But for record purpose, I'll be able to make it clear to the public. We normally use 1960. When the museum was in existence, it started around Iwebo area, around the palace. And from there, after some years, they took it to the old post office area. It was 1973, during the time of Osamuel Obemudia, when he was the Midwestern governor, as the case may be. It was him that decided to use his own wisdom by building a befitting place for a museum to call a place of his own. The National Museum means a lot to me in the sense that, growing up, a lot of our history is in segments. The National Museum was the first place I got to when I came to Benin, where I could see the full timeline of my people, from prehistoric times, from the times when they had an identity, to the times when they have taken up other cultures. It's the first point where I could finally see the big picture of everything. And it was very eye-opening for me. I went to the museum the first time in my life, when I was just nine, on my own. But prior to that time, I've gone on excursions, right from primary three. We pick a day, once a year, we go to the museum, where the curator will take us around and make us understand who we are. As a system of museums, the function of museums is to collect, preserve, research, educate. Benin museums have been following that function. Our primary duty is to see how we'll be able to preserve. And we have been doing that, making it known to the public, to people who come here from different schools, universities, secondary schools, individuals within and outside the country. They come here for one research or the other. It could be on a particular object, it could be on the culture of Benin, and one thing or another. People who go to the museum are actually children from schools. Public schools, very few public schools, have the means. Private schools. They pay for the excursion, they take the children there, they take them around. The children come out, they've seen artworks. How much they imbibe, I can't tell. But the fact that they are taking the day to see objects that go back five, six, hundred years, will give some of them a concept of deep pride. Like I said, if you don't know where you are coming from, you can't know where you are. And if you don't know where you are, you can't know where you're going. Benin's cultural heritage can preserve through the museum's excursion programs by having more synergy with the centre of the culture, which is the Oba's Palace. That is one. Number two, the programs don't need to necessarily be at the National Museum. We'll have more museum-like attached programs in different spaces within Benin, in different youth spaces within Benin, that will enable more people to have an idea or more people to get involved. That is one. Then secondly, like I said earlier, if you have more online presence for the museum, its artefacts, the ideas, at least at the basics, some form of e-museum that would serve as a pretext for you to come to the National Museum. For example, now we can go to a community in Benin and we could have a program showcasing the history of that community. You'll see that more people will be like, OK, wow, I didn't know this before. And you will draw more attention towards history, the artefacts and whatever you want to draw attention to. Of course, no museum cannot stand alone. It must collaborate with the community, different sets of people. We collaborate with them to see how we'll be able to continue to preserve this, our cultural heritage. We have what we will call a moot. Our work will happen not to be only inside. We have some that we cannot carry, which has to do with monuments. And we have some departments here that are the ones going around to give us the feedback. And we cannot get the feedback unless the community is free to give us information. At times, something will happen somewhere, the community will call our attention for us to now know what is actually happening in such area. And we go to that place and do whatever we can do. The Museum of West African Art is a recent initiative that's being undertaken by a private non-profit. Really, it emerged in response to growing concerns around the deficit of museum infrastructure in Nigeria. And really, as a result of a concerted effort from institutions around the world and African governments and community-based organizations to really propel the restitution effort into reality. And since our establishment in 2020, it's actually evolved from the notion of being a singular monumental building in the way that you might expect when you hear the word museum to something that I think is more responsive to the notion of how we as Africans can re-articulate what it actually means to develop museum practice on the continent. MOA exists really to support other museums and other creative and cultural institutions to achieve their own missions and to expand their agenda to the extent that we can be of support. And whether this is through training, providing opportunities for residencies, for fellowships around conservation practice, whether it's providing art storage and collections management support to them, or in enabling them to also host their curatorial and exhibition programs. The whole essence of this is to really amplify what African institutions are capable of. In addition, we have been quite keen to establish heritage management standards that can be replicable and that can also help to preserve and protect the heritage, the material heritage that currently still exists in Benin City. And I think this project can't exist without the engagement of the stakeholders. Those are the different guilds, organizations in Uhu Street, the bronze casters, the wood carvers, the earthen builders that have this historical knowledge of how to build with earth, and also just the people that are within the district and within the area. I think those are essential, not just for this project, but how we kind of think about projects as a whole in the continent. I think this relationship between the community, this relationship between artisans, this relationship between our cultural heritage that is living and being practiced, and how to integrate that into building projects like this is essential. And the only way that it can be done for it to be successful and sustainable. What we're trying to do is ensure that when you come and you visit a place like Benin City, you are aware that there were builders, there were engineers, there were artists, there were doctors. Whatever qualifications that are part of any kind of formal civilization, you had them represented and thriving in these societies. So the Benin Initiative, they are doing a great work. I want to also thank the other part of the world that have agreed to collaborate with them, just to see how the culture, particularly the collections of Benin, will not go into extinction. There is a gigantic building going on there at the front of the gallery here. And they started building because of the repatriation of all the objects when they will be repatriated to Nigeria. And that is where they are going to store them, keep them, so that it's not an easy task for anybody to go there and say you want to take any aspect. So Museum Nigeria, and particularly the federal government, particularly with the help of our Director General, they have done much to see how we'll be able to preserve these collections when they come in addition to all the ones we have before the repatriated ones start coming to the country. One of the really interesting things that we're seeing in Benin City right now is just the transformation of the museum landscape. Here, before Moa, you had the National Museum, of course, but we are also now seeing Moa coming up and the Royal Palace Museum as well. So I think what could eventually happen is integrated programming, being able to provide for support in terms of conservation practice or research. Ultimately, we are opening up a space that can support other cultural institutions. And I think it's a really great way of demonstrating how Benin as a city, but also the Edo people are really at the at the crux of what is happening in museum development on the continent. I want to also thank the other part of the world that have agreed to collaborate with them, just to see how the culture, particularly the collections of Benin, will not go into extinction. To know your future, you need to know your past. You can't thrive in a space where you don't know your identity. And getting the objects back, or our artefacts, is key to understanding who we were and rewriting our history and putting us back on a course chart of progression.