The auction house, Christie’s, rejected calls to halt a sale of Nigerian artefacts which were looted by British troops in the 19th century.
The sale went ahead yesterday in spite of protests from Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Critics of the sale said that it illustrated the misappropriation of “black culture, identity and especially art”.
According to Babatunde Adebiyi, an adviser for the commission: “Christie's ought not be dealing in Nigerian antiquities that were probably taken out at a time of conflict, contrary to the Hague Convention of 1954.”
He continued: "There is never going to be a universal principle that says something made by my forebears belongs to you in perpetuity because you bought it in an auction house. African antiquities will always be African, just like a Da Vinci will always be European."
The protests centred around the sale of a duo of sacred statues made in the second half of the nineteenth century. They were looted in the late 1960s at the height of the Biafran War.
The commission also drew attention to the sale for having a plaque from the Benin Bronzes, which was looted in 1897, as one of the lots. The plaque failed to sell.
In a statement defending the sale, Christie’s said: "The auction house believes there is no evidence these statues were removed from their original location by someone who was not local to the area, or that the area they came from at the time they were acquired was part of the conflict at the time.”
According to the auction house, they only sell “objects where we are confident in the ownership and the provenance”.
