Barcelona has not been an imperial capital and, therefore, does not have large collections of colonial origin as do London, Paris or, to a lesser extent, Madrid. But it also has reasons to rethink the fate of one of its museums. To keep track of his most questionable collections, you have to travel to territories that were once remote. For example, to the heart of Africa.
Nigeria is today a poor country. The high inflation of the last few months is leading millions of people to extreme poverty, with a per capita income of 4.7 dollars a day. Despite being considered an emerging regional power by the World Bank, its prospects for improvement are bleak in the short or medium term. Most Nigerians will never be able to travel the world. That, in the utopian case that someone issued them a visa.
For all these reasons, the vast majority of Nigerians will not have any chance to see in person the bulk of what is considered one of the great artistic treasures created by their ancestors: the Benin bronzes, looted in 1897. by British soldiers in the kingdom of the same name, in the south of present-day Nigeria.
Although there is a trickle of pieces that are being returned, most of the more than 3,000 that made up the hoard are still held by Western museums, especially the British Museum.
The awareness of being victims of looting is growing in the African country, where they do not want to know anything about compensation in the form of virtual substitutes. Nigeria plans to open the Edo Museum of West African Art in 2025, which will be built in Benin City and where they want to gather the bronzes scattered around the world.
Among them, who knows, maybe there are the four figures from Benin that the Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món treasures on Montcada street, from the funds of the collector Albert Folch. At least in the museum they are exhibited as such. One is bronze. For this reason, the city (the museum is municipally owned) would have to consider that what is going to end up being a problem could be an opportunity if it acts on time. How? Questioning the continuity of this facility inaugurated in 2015 and promoted during the term of Xavier Trias as mayor.
In all honesty, it cannot be concluded that its collections have a colonial origin. They are largely the result of the trips of the Barcelona sculptor Eudald Serra, sponsored by the industrialist and collector Albert Folch. Those who have studied their trajectories place those acquisitions in the context of an artistic and tourist activity.
Most of the pieces were bought in their countries of origin, without looting. But the truth is that the objects that are exhibited today in the museum on Montcada street were decontextualized and integrated in their day in a collection that is exhibited with criteria similar to those of colonial museums. Not to mention the pieces bought from other European collectors, whose origin, who knows, could be pillaging or looting carried out with violence.
Perhaps the most sensible thing would be to start a review process for each of the pieces. Some are donations that can be returned without problems. In the event that the Benin works are certified as indeed originating from the former African kingdom, they should be promptly repatriated to Nigeria, provided this is legally possible due to ownership issues.
And with regard to the rest, it cannot be ruled out that there are communities interested in recovering them. What in Barcelona is an irrelevant piece in a rarely visited museum can be a real treasure in its place of origin.
In short, it would be a matter of contemplating the crisis of the "black of Banyoles" as an example of what should not be done. In that matter, the museum and the Banyoles City Council and the Generalitat dragged their feet until the international pressure was unbearable and the remains of the stuffed bechuana had to be sent to Botswana.
Barcelona, the city where the body had been shamefully exhibited at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, looked the other way, while the Spanish government finished spoiling everything with a painful effort to return the remains.
Going ahead, opening a transparent process for the repatriation of valuables in this and other museums would be more in line with the principles that Barcelona and Catalonia as a whole tend to uphold.
The bulk of the Eudald Serra and Albert Folch collection can be preserved with another discourse: the reconstruction of the trajectory of two peculiar adventurers who shared their passion for knowledge. But that does not have to be done in such a remarkable building and in such a special street. There are other facilities in Barcelona that could house a story of these characteristics.
Just a few meters away, on the sidewalk in front of the Nadal and Marquès de Lió palaces, where the collection is exhibited, is a Museu Picasso that has its growth potential strangled. The adjoining building is not available to be integrated into the complex dedicated to the artist from Malaga.
It would be much more reasonable to undertake the expansion of the Picasso in the current Museu de Cultures del Món. The musealization that was made ten years ago of the old palaces was magnificent. Its rooms, once emptied, could be used to house temporary Picasso exhibitions, which would free up space in the main building to exhibit pieces from the permanent collection that are now in the reserve rooms.
Doing so would also have something of a nod to the history of art, since the influence that the Benin bronzes had on Picasso's work is well known.
