Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Returns Art Works to Nigeria
ARTBEAT | NYTIMES
By Tom Mashberg
MASSACHUSETTS---The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has returned eight works of art to Nigeria after determining that the documentation accompanying some of the items, six of which were bequeathed in early 2013 by a prominent donor and collector, was suspect or fraudulent. The repatriated antiquities include two Nok terracotta figures and a terracotta head, items known to be at high risk for theft; a wooden ancestral figure from the 18th or 19th century known as an ekpu, which disappeared from a Nigerian museum in the 1970s; an elaborate bronze altar figure of a warrior from the 1910s, which was likely stolen from the Royal Palace in Benin City in 1976; two terracotta heads from the Kingdom of Benin, and a group of three figures made of wood and fiber known as Kalabari. [link]
By Tom Mashberg
MASSACHUSETTS---The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has returned eight works of art to Nigeria after determining that the documentation accompanying some of the items, six of which were bequeathed in early 2013 by a prominent donor and collector, was suspect or fraudulent. The repatriated antiquities include two Nok terracotta figures and a terracotta head, items known to be at high risk for theft; a wooden ancestral figure from the 18th or 19th century known as an ekpu, which disappeared from a Nigerian museum in the 1970s; an elaborate bronze altar figure of a warrior from the 1910s, which was likely stolen from the Royal Palace in Benin City in 1976; two terracotta heads from the Kingdom of Benin, and a group of three figures made of wood and fiber known as Kalabari. [link]
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