Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will present my research on the 'restitution' campaign that the Portuguese diamond company Diamang began in the 1950s and show how it was a propagandistic response to the British raze of Benin (1897). This will allow me to provide an interesting theoretical angle on current debates.

Paper long abstract:

Pitt-Rivers' Antique Works of Art from Benin (1900) had a profound impact on Portuguese society. Detailing several bronze sculptures seized by the British during the raze of Benin (1897), this catalogue makes the Portuguese influence on some of their patterns and themes clear. While this 'revelation' was not enough to raise public sympathy for the plight of the Edo people, when Leo Frobenius proposed that Ife and Benin Art had an 'Atlantean' origin, Pitt-River's book allowed the Portuguese to counterargue that these masterworks were influenced by them instead. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, they were framed as part of the national heritage and became central to the imperial rewriting of Portuguese national mythology that was sponsored by the dictatorial New State. In the 1950s, Diamang, a diamond mining company operating in Angola, began financing the 'restitution' of hundreds of African objects back to the Continent, beginning with a 'Benin head'. Regardless of their cultures of origin, these objects were symbolically 'returned' to the Dundo Museum, a private institution located at the far North-eastern limits of Angola. Diamang's propagandistic efforts were framed as the creation of a 'Museum of African Art' in Africa, where racialized populations could be taught about their 'past' and admire 'masterpieces' taken to Europe by competing colonial powers. In this paper I will present my research findings on this historical episode, drawing conclusions that give us perspective on the terms of the current debate about 'restitution' and the creation of new ethnographic and Art museums in Africa.