Case Review: Farmer-Paellmann v Smithsonian Inst.

By Beverly Osazuwa

The ongoing campaign for the return of the Benin Bronzes has been one of the most recognized cases for the restitution of looted cultural heritage from the colonial era. In the 1897 British invasion of the Benin Kingdom (modern-day Benin City in Edo State, Nigeria),^[1] soldiers slaughtered civilians, burned their homes, stole thousands of cultural objects,^[2] and left the Palace scorched to the ground.^[3] As a result of the looting, Benin’s heritage, including valuable sculptures, casts, swords, and ivories, were auctioned and sold to museums across Europe and North America.^[4]

Now commonly known as the Benin Bronzes, these objects are heralded as a symbol of African ingenuity and Black art. The violent seizure and the fight for their return have been at the center of restitution debates for decades – the earliest recorded calls for return dating to the 1930s.^[5] In 2022, the Board of Regents to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. voted to de-accession 29 of their 39 Benin Bronzes and officially remove the Benin Bronzes from its holdings and transfer them to Nigeria.^[6] The decision came after the formalization of a new institution-wide restitution policy in consideration of contemporary moral norms.^[7]

However, the art world was shocked by a class action lawsuit filed against the Smithsonian by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann and the Restitution Study Group, a New York-based organisation that advocates for reparations and restitutions for African-American descendants of enslaved persons. The plaintiffs sought to prevent and terminate the Institute's plans to return the objects. Among the claims was a pending breach of fiduciary duty owed to African-American descendants of enslaved persons. The complaint alleged that as persons descending from those trafficked under the Kingdom, the return of objects to Nigeria and the Oba (King) of Benin would deny African Americans the right to their heritage, and unjustly enrich the ancestors of purported capturers. The case of Farmer-Paellmann v. Smithsonian is novel as it exists at the intersection of reparations, trusts, and the restitution of one of the most prominent and recognizable works of African art.