knife of iron, wood, copper alloy, cloth, and resin; overall: 42.6 cm; congolese c. 1800s.
Ok lets chat
There is a deficit of posts here sourced from the african continent. This is because the majority of the items from africa on TIA are uploaded by the museums and institutions holding them hostage.
Is my act of screenshotting an object archived by MoMA equivalent to their stealing / profiting from the object in real life? No, but I’m a usamerican not from the black community and I have far too much awareness of the fact of their source. It feels like I am being duplicitous somewhat when I share them, because I am. I’m doing what the MoMA does, IF on a smaller scale. Still, from the act itself you can’t deny the similar ideological connotations of displaying the art without elaborating upon its origin. This works in favor of the hegemony, no matter how small the detail we aim for business as usual to maintain the symbolic order. Wouldn’t it be nice to forget where that dagger came from, how I got the photo of it in the first place? Most people don’t click the source link. The intention may be different and proportionally my screenshot is not quite so big-picture harmful, but it feels wrong and that is enough. This said my goal moving forward is to begin looking through books by africa native authors / historians and finding sources not from like belgium or x y z american museum. Thanks for listening 👍
OP's thing is looking for stuff on The Internet Archive, so this is not so much aimed at him, but in general whenever there is any mention of anything related to Africa and museums or collections or objects, I simply must remind everyone of the existence of Digital Benin.
Digital Benin
Digital Benin brings together all objects, historical photographs and rich documentation material from collections worldwide to provide a long-requested overview of the royal artefacts from Benin Kingdom looted in the late nineteenth century. The historic Benin objects are an expression of Benin arts, culture and history, and were originally used as royal representational arts, to depict historical events, to communicate, to worship and perform rituals. The digital platform introduces new scholarship which connects digital documentation about the translocated objects to oral histories, object research, historical context, a foundational Edo language catalogue, provenance names, a map of the Benin Kingdom and museum collections worldwide. Digital Benin connects data from 5,304 objects across 139 institutions in 21 countries. Digital Benin’s scope focuses on objects looted by British forces from the Kingdom of Benin (now Edo State, Nigeria) in February 1897 and distributed in its immediate aftermath. Together, these events and processes led to the worldwide translocation of the objects shown on this platform. A small set of objects is included in the catalogue to represent the broader context in which the artistic production of Benin guilds is situated: Bini-Portuguese Ivories, produced and circulated outside West Africa in the 16th centuries, objects produced in neighbouring regions of the kingdom and a selection of works produced by named artists after 1930, which are held in museum collections.
