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Benin Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria ed. Barbara Plankensteiner Vienna: Snoeck Publishers, 2007. 535 pp., 1 map, 500 illustrations, bibliography. euro49 (paper).
reviewed by Jean M. Borgatti
Benin Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria, edited by Barbara Plankensteiner with contributions from an all-star cast of scholars of Benin art and history from three continents, accompanies an exhibition by the same name that opened on May 8, 2007, in Vienna. Exhibit and book have been in the works since 2002, when Plankensteiner and her cohorts arrived in Benin City to open discussion with the Palace and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments and begin commissioning, documenting, and collecting contemporary works from Igun Street. The result is a significant extension of (and departure from) previous exhibitions of Benin art and associated catalogues. The Oba of Benin, Omo N'Oba Erediauwa CFR, contributed an introductory note and, in a dramatic break from tradition (or dramatic instigation of a new tradition), loaned works from his personal collection to the exhibition, as did High Priest Osemwegie Ebohon of Benin City.
Plankensteiner's goals, set out in her introduction, are to consider two complementary cultural perceptions of Benin art: a Western appreciation focusing on aesthetic qualities and an indigenous one oriented around the works as historical documents, mnemonic catalysts, and ritual objects (p. 22). The book is a staggering 535-page volume consisting not only of a catalogue of the objects exhibited but also 22 essays addressing themes such as the relationship between Benin art and political history and the reception of Benin art in Europe and America. It not only extends the work of Austrian-born Felix von Luschan, but also rivals of his classic Die Altertumer von Benin (1919) in both volume and scope.
The exhibition's 301 exhibited works, though extensive, remain a mere fraction of the 2400 works estimated by von Luschan to have been removed from Benin in 1897, or the 4000 works estimated by Philip Dark (1982) to be circulating outside Benin nearly a century later. The catalogue illustrates them in color and explicates each in detailed notes by nineteen separate authors, many of whom either wrote a thematic essay for the catalogue or presented a paper at the conference that marked the opening. Additional views...