Art History & Visual Material Culture webinar - DAN HICKS (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford): "The Brutish Museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution"

Prof. Dr. Dan Hicks, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
‘The Brutish Museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution’

About the speaker

Dan Hicks FSA is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator of World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He was Visiting Professor at the musée du quai Branly in 2017-18, and was awarded the Rivers Medal of the Royal Anthropological Society in 2017.

Abstract

Dan's new book, The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution was published by Pluto Press in November 2020, and has been described in reviews by Ben Okri OBE as "a startling act of conscience", by The Economist as "a real game-changer", by The Guardian as “beautifully written and carefully argued”, by CNN as “unsparing”, by Nature as “timely”, and by the Sunday Times as "destined to become an essential text". The Brutish Museums was listed as one of the New York Times Best Art Books of 2020, with the recommendation: “If you care about museums and the world, read this book”.

Twitter: @ProfDanHicks