Guide to the Benin Collection at the Penn Museum

This guide examines America's oldest collection of Benin art, and one of its least published. Ivory, brass, and wooden art from one of the greatest African precolonial states--the only sub-Saharan polity with 500 years of surviving art--are examined through contextual lenses that provide insight into the Ẹdo people's creativity and world view. The guide also considers the collection's specific history and growth, and current plans to repatriate the artworks back to Nigeria's Benin Kingdom. For readers unfamiliar with Benin and its art, this introduces the complexities of the palace, its successive monarchs and chiefs, and interprets metaphorical motifs such as mudfish, leopards, and elephants. Artworks refer to family and court rivalries, as well as the strict court hierarchies that dictated who could use which materials and wear particular regalia. Interactions with the Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries, their impact on trade and luxury goods, and their introduction of Catholicism paint a portrait of a society that absorbed only what they found useful and flourished in both war and peace. Original fieldwork illuminates Benin art and culture and previously published archival material provides insight regarding major collectors and individuals who shaped the field of African art history.

Kathy Curnow has been a Consulting Scholar in the African Section of the Penn Museum since 2007 and Professor of African Art History at Cleveland State University, where she's taught since 1990. She lived and taught in Nigeria and has done extensive fieldwork research among the ?do, Nupe, and It kiri regularly since 1983.