{"product_id":"the-brutish-museums","title":"The Brutish Museums","description":"New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020\u003cbr\u003e'Essential' - Sunday Times\u003cbr\u003e'Brilliantly enraged' - New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e'A real game-changer'- EconomistWalk into any Western museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen.Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections.The Brutish Museums sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. Since its first publication, museums across the western world have begun to return their Bronzes to Nigeria, heralding a new era in the way we understand the collections of empire we once took for granted.","brand":"Pluto Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57632217727302,"sku":"9780745346229","price":17.37,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0852\/3081\/3510\/files\/c77428233048427d31bc91d426166052aa0944d460dcde93f116659f8494904b.jpg?v=1792262732","url":"https:\/\/www.averdo.com\/en\/products\/the-brutish-museums","provider":"Averdo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}