Alisa LaGamma is Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator in Charge of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Features
Detail of Ikere Palace door and lintel (c. 1910–14), Olowe of Ise, Yoruba peoples, Nigeria. British Museum, London

Naming rights – anonymity and attribution in African art

Historical African artists are rarely named in museums – but we must retrieve what information we can

5 Dec 2020

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July/August 2021

In the news

Detail of a 17th-century plaque depicting a junior court official in the Kingdom of Benin – one of two to be returned to Nigeria by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met ought to have returned two stolen Benin Bronzes years ago

The museum has agreed to give back two plaques in its collection that were taken illegally from Nigeria after 1960. Why now?

Illustration by David Biskup

Is the ‘arm’s-length’ principle under threat in UK museums?

With the government waging its ‘culture war’, the independence of national museums is at stake, write Chris Smith and Margot Finn

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