Zurich's Museum Rietberg Transfers 11 Benin Bronzes To Nigerian Government The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Zurich's Museum Rietberg Transfers Ownership of 11 Benin Objects to Nigeria, With Two Returns Expected This Summer

Zurich is moving ahead with a new restitution agreement that separates legal title from physical location. The city of Zurich, which owns the Museum Rietberg, announced on March 20, 2026, that it will transfer ownership of 11 objects associated with the Kingdom of Benin to the Republic of Nigeria, represented by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

Under the arrangement, two works identified as especially significant will be sent to Nigeria, likely this summer, while nine others will remain in Switzerland as loans despite the change in ownership.

The objects in question are part of a wider European reckoning with the legacy of the 1897 British raid on Benin City, in present-day Nigeria, when royal and ceremonial artworks were seized and later dispersed through collectors, dealers, and auctions. Museum Rietberg's holdings trace back to the early 20th century and to the collection assembled largely in the 1920s and 1930s by German-Swiss banker Eduard von der Heydt, who framed the works he acquired as art rather than ethnographic material.

Two works slated to return

Rietberg director Annette Bhagwati singled out two pieces for repatriation, describing them as“ritual objects of great importance.”

One is a commemorative bronze head dating to around 1850. According to the museum, it represents the ancestor of a chief and would have been placed in the king's ancestral shrine. Looted in 1897, it entered von der Heydt's collection sometime before 1927.

The second is an 18th-century ivory tusk that would have stood on an ancestral shrine in the Royal Palace in Benin City, mounted on a bronze memorial head. The tusk's provenance reflects the long afterlife of Benin works in the European market: it passed through several British collectors and appeared in a Sotheby's London sale in 1962 before reaching the Rietberg in 1993 via a Zurich dealer.

Nine objects to remain in Zurich as loans

While the transfer of ownership covers 11 objects, the majority will stay in Switzerland. Bhagwati said the Nigerian side supported an approach in which Benin's artistic legacy would continue to be presented in Zurich, even as legal title returns to Nigeria.

Among the works remaining at the Rietberg is a pendant bronze mask dating as far back as the 17th century. Also looted in 1897 from the Royal Palace in Benin City, the mask moved through the market for more than a century: after an auction in 1902, it was acquired by German and American collectors, later returning to Europe after a Dutch dealer purchased it in 2009. The Rietberg acquired the mask in 2011, and it will now remain in Zurich as a permanent loan.

A Swiss initiative with broader implications

The transfers grow out of the Benin Initiative Switzerland (BIS), launched in 2021 under the leadership of the Museum Rietberg. The project set out to clarify how Benin objects in Swiss museum collections relate to the events of 1897. BIS concluded that 55 objects in Swiss museums were probably connected in some way to the looting of Benin City.

Zurich's decision places the Rietberg alongside other European institutions that have moved to restore ownership of Benin works to Nigeria, including Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum and Holland's Wereldmuseum Leiden. The model now taking shape in Zurich - restitution paired with long-term loans for selected objects - signals how museums and source nations are negotiating both redress and continued public access, with provenance research increasingly setting the terms of what remains on view.

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