The royal palace, Benin City; probably taken by British forces during the Punitive Expedition 1897. Lois Dailey Orswell, Pomfret Center, CT, by 1972, gift; to the Harvard University Art Museums, 1988
The bronze, ivory and wooden artworks broadly known as the \u201cBenin Bronzes\u201d were taken from Benin City as part of the British Punitive Expeditionof 1897 and dispersed to private collections and museums around the world. The Harvard Art Museums acknowledge the violence and trauma of the Expeditionand understand that the presence of this cultural material in Western museum is experienced as continued injustice by descendent communities.