Switzerland Returns 23 Artifacts to Nigeria After Years of Provenance Research
Switzerland has transferred 23 artifacts to Nigeria, including 18 Benin Bronzes that had been held by three Swiss museums. The restitution, completed this week and formalized at a ceremony yesterday, reflects a broader shift in how museums are confronting objects tied to colonial violence and illicit circulation.
The bronzes came from the Geneva Ethnography Museum, the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, and the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich. The remaining five objects — one bracelet and four monoliths from Nigeria’s Niger Delta region — were recovered through separate criminal proceedings. According to the Museum Rietberg, those five items did not pass through the three museums involved in the Benin restitution.
The handover followed years of research under the Benin Initiative Switzerland, a provenance project spearheaded by the Museum Rietberg in 2021 and joined by eight Swiss museums. That work concluded that the objects were most likely looted from the Kingdom of Benin during the British attack of 1897, when forces seized thousands of metal and ivory works made for the Oba of Benin. Those objects were later dispersed through international collections.
At yesterday’s ceremony, Swiss Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider and Nigeria’s Minister of Art, Culture, and the Creative Economy Hannatu Musa Musawa signed an agreement on the import, export, and repatriation of cultural property. The accord establishes a legal framework for preventing trafficking and sets out best practices for future restitutions.
The returned works will now be split between display and storage in Nigeria. Some are set to go on view at the National Museum in Lagos, while others will enter the Oba Ovonramwen Storage Facility at the National Museum in Benin City. Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments is also working toward a gallery devoted to repatriated Benin material arriving from Switzerland, the U.K. and other countries.
The Swiss handover adds to a growing international record of restitutions, even as major institutions continue to diverge in their responses. Nine of the treasures remain on loan at the Museum Rietberg, and one at the Geneva Ethnography Museum, where they will continue to be seen in a different institutional context — one shaped less by possession than by accountability.
