Don't hope to get rid of books (Umberto Eco)
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Museums of Cruelty: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence, and Cultural Restitution

19.99 €
In stock
Museums of Cruelty: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence, and Cultural Restitution
19.99 €
In basket
Imagine the most horrific crime against humanity being repeated over and over again—every morning, when the lights come on in museums around the world. Dan Hicks, archaeologist and curator at the renowned Pitt Rivers Museum of Ethnography in Oxford, aims to debunk the myth of the political neutrality and moral nobility of the world's cultural treasures. Using the example of hundreds of works of art looted by British colonialists from the palace of the ruler of the Benin Kingdom and now adorning dozens of museums across Europe, he mercilessly exposes the logic of empire, which transformed sacred objects into commodities and the plunder of an entire kingdom into a "humanitarian mission." This book is an investigative piece, an indictment, and, ultimately, a call to action.

"Like the telegraph, the camera, and also archaeology and anthropology, the museum attempts to destroy time and space, to weaponize distance. Like the camera, the museum does not freeze time, but controls the exhibition, measures time." The age of withdrawal is giving way to the age of return, and like a gun that fires twice, the moment for the second shot is about to arrive." (Dan Hicks)
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