Collecting copper alloy portrait heads: A history of the acquisition and export of the Wúnmọníjẹ̀ heads in late colonial Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract Much has been written about the spectacular naturalistic copper and copper alloy heads of Wúnmọníjẹ̀ Compound, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria, which stunned the art world after they were unearthed in 1938, on the cusp of the Second World War. However, little scholarly attention has been afforded to the controversial aftermath of their discovery, when multiple foreign parties endeavoured to collect and export many of them from Nigeria, while legislation to prohibit the export of antiquities was lacking. Drawing on archives from the USA and the UK, this article reveals important details of the collecting of several of the heads in the late colonial period. Coinciding with renewed calls for the restitution of Nigerian cultural patrimony from foreign institutions, it sheds light on the British Museum’s acquisition of one such head, the acquisition of two by the American anthropologist William R. Bascom, and the purported export by a German export company, of several heads which remain unaccounted for to this day.