In The Making of Museums in Nigeria, Amanda Hellman argues that the Nigerian museological landscape that arose during the 1950s was defined by a culmination of individual choices made by archaeologist, curator, and colonial education officer Kenneth C. Murray (229). Based on deep archival research in underexplored personal archives, Hellman traces the careers of Murray, Bernard Fagg, Ekpo Eyo, Ernest Duckworth, and other “museum-minded individuals” in British Nigeria. In so doing, Hellman carefully disentangles the complex factors leading to the establishment of museums in Nigeria: the colonial imperative to use museums for social control, UNESCO’s internationalist emphasis on museums as tools for societal development, and Murray’s personal mission to preserve a visual culture that he believed to be on the verge of extinction.
The Making of Museums’ seven chapters are organized chronologically, beginning in 1936 with Murray’s first survey of Yoruba crafts in Ibadan and Abeokuta, and ending with a short chapter tracing the changes in Nigeria’s department of antiquities in the first decade of independence. Chapter One situates the reader in the British imperial context, providing in-depth biographies of Kenneth Murray and E. H. Duckworth and outlining their involvement in imperial exhibitions of Nigerian art and antiquities during the 1930s. Subsequent chapters follow these characters to Nigeria, artfully tracing their imperial mission to prevent the destruction and exportation of Nigerian artifacts, their self-motivated collecting imperatives, their workplace tensions, and their personal correspondence. This organization allows the reader to understand Murray and Duckworth as complex characters, whose legacies fall somewhere in between altruistic heroes saving Nigerian culture from devastation, and “colonial minions” using British standards to judge certain artifacts “worthy” of conservation (xi).
Chapter Two explores the controversial saga of seventeen Ife bronze heads excavated in 1938, some of which were distributed to private owners including American anthropologist William Bascom. Consistent underreporting of archaeological discoveries, overlapping claims of ownership, and unscrupulous acquisition practices in this story illustrate the complex landscape of Nigerian antiquities regulations in the late 1930s. The “Bascom Incident” was significant enough to spawn new export legislation in Nigeria, crafted by Murray’s newly created Nigerian Antiquities Service. Exploring the politics of antiquities regulation, calls for repatriation, and early museum plans via the Bascom Incident is compelling, although the many block quotes in this chapter prove distracting.
Chapter Three introduces Bernard E. Fagg, an archaeologist who would go on to found the Jos Museum in 1952 and who would serve as a foil to Murray throughout this career. While Murray’s remit was to protect antiquities from illegal export and to impose a systematic archaeological practice in Nigeria, he was never tasked with developing museums. This chapter deftly weaves together the various motivations behind the “museum project” in Nigeria—from Murray and Fagg’s mission to train Nigerians such as Ekpo Eyo and Liman Ciroma as stewards of their own culture, to the educational mission of the colonial office, to the work of leaders such as the Ooni of Ife and the Oba of Benin. This narrative continues in the fourth chapter, which disentangles the complex missions of the Antiquities service (archaeological excavations, the preservation of antiquities, the regulations of exports, and the pursuit of repatriation efforts) resulting in the passage of the Antiquities Ordinance of 1953. Hellman argues that although Murray advocated for the care of Nigerian visual culture, he imposed Western ideas about what care and preservation meant—ideas which were not necessarily shared by Nigerians themselves (120). Here, as with her discussion of the “museum project,” Hellman demonstrates that Murray and his compatriots did not engage in critical inquiry around the fundamental idea of artistic preservation, exhibition, and museums themselves. This is one of Hellman’s most compelling arguments.
Chapter Four also introduces debates among Murray, Fagg, and other administrators about whether to prioritize the development of regional or national museums in Nigeria. Hellman explores this debate in more detail in Chapters Five and Six, which trace the establishment of national museums in Jos and Lagos (Chapter Five), and five regional museums (Chapter Six) throughout the 1950s. These chapters productively draw upon photographs of exhibits and architectural blueprints; however, deeper analysis of these visual materials might have helped reconstruct what the museums and exhibitions actually looked like to their audiences. Furthermore, while Chapter Five includes a brief discussion of the UNESCO Training School at Jos and the Association des Musées en Afrique Tropicale, these chapters give little regional context about new museums in other independent African states which may have furthered Hellman’s argument.
The final chapter follows the Department of Antiquities through the first decade of Nigerian independence, and culminates with the career of its first Nigerian director, Ekpo Eyo, and with civil war in Nigeria. This short chapter makes some compelling speculations about the sometimes-strained relationship between Kenneth Murray and Bernard Fagg, demonstrating that these personal relationships and individual choices had a marked effect on the Nigerian museum landscape.
The Making of Museums is a useful and informative read for historians, art historians, and museum anthropologists who are interested in the development of the modern African museological landscape. It is a deeply and meticulously researched text which disentangles the complexities of the colonial administration in Nigeria, and will therefore be most useful for those already familiar with the political histories of colonial West Africa. This is an important book that should inform contemporary conversations about museums’ colonial legacies in contemporary Africa.
