81 The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), recently unveiled its new Benin Kingdom Gallery dedicated to the Robert Owen Lehman Collection of bronzes1 and ivories created in the kingdom of Benin, located in present-day Nigeria (fig. 1).2 The single greatest private holding of ancient objects from Benin, the Lehman Collection was a gift to the museum in 2012. The new gallery showcases thirty-six objects (including two loans from the Lehman Collection) comprised of thirty bronzes and six ivories, all dating from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It also includes two early Sapi Afro-Portuguese ivories from Sierra Leone and Guinea, crafted by African artists for the European market. Robert Owen Lehman, whose father was a renowned patron of the arts and whose greatgrandfather founded the investment firm Lehman Bros., acquired the works on the art market in the 1960s and 1970s.3 He was initially drawn to art from Benin because he appreciated that Benin sculptors produced some of the finest examples of bronze casting made anywhere in the world. The new gallery now realizes his vision of sharing these objects with as many people as possible, allowing visitors from around the world to experience the power, beauty, and superior technical sophis- FIG. 3 (above): “Figure of a warrior on horseback” (fig. 2). From: Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, Antique Works of Art from Benin, Collected by Lieutenant General Pitt Rivers, London, 1900, Plate XIII, Figs. 79–81. Courtesy of The William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. FIG. 4 (left): Mounted ruler (fig. 2). Watercolor by George Frederick Waldo Johnson. From Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt- Rivers, General Fox-Pitt-Rivers: Catalogues of His Collections, 1882– 1899, vol. 5, p. 1638. Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, MS Add.9455. tication of these remarkable artworks. The dynamic installation sets the works into their artistic and historical contexts. It tells the story behind these magnificent pieces—sculptures, relief plaques, ritual objects, and regalia— along with the complex history and traditions of the Edo peoples that inhabit the kingdom. The history of the Benin kingdom is well known and has been explored in many writings.4 According to these accounts, the foundational phase of the kingdom under its first dynasty, the Ogiso, known as “rulers from the sky,” remains shrouded in mystery. Kings of the second dynasty, founded by Prince Oranmiyan in the twelfth century, consolidated the state between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and their descendants rule the Benin kingdom to this day.5 During the last years of the reign of Oba (King) Ewuare the Great (c. 1440–73), first contact with Portuguese navigators occurred when their vessels arrived on the coast. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese reached the inland Benin kingdom. Through these intermediaries, Benin gained access to the Atlantic trade networks, exchanging slaves, ivory, cloth, and pepper for imported goods such as textiles, coral beads, copper alloy, and firearms.6 In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Benin experienced an age of great prosperity. With the help of their Portuguese allies, Oba Ozolua (ruled c. 1481–1504) and his successor Oba Esigie (ruled c. 1504–50) expanded the boundaries of the kingdom and controlled trade routes and commerce. Court arts flourished and attested to the kingdom’s wealth. Through
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