Dan Hicks
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Museums, Arts, Culture, Legacies of Colonialism, Archaeology, Heritage, History, Empire, Restitution, Decolonisation, Universities, Teaching, Education, Curation, Anthropology, the "Culture War"
Articles by Dan Hicks
Table of Contents - January 15, 2026
Skip to Content The Empire Gives Back What does a fair policy of museum repatriation look like? A new book considers the issue in terms of human rights, cultural sovereignty, and stewardship. Who Owns Beauty?
One Day, Britain’s Monuments Will Fall
Interview by Elias Feroz After years of heated debates over statues, museums, and so-called “cancel culture,” the fight over memory and heritage shows no sign of slowing down. Across the world, monuments that once seemed immovable have been toppled, renamed, or removed.
What Isn’t at the V&A Storehouse
You can’t escape it: this is the same colonial museum we know, in a shiny new suit You’ll find it on a spit of land in a meander of the A12 in East London, between Hackney Cut and the River Lea. It’s where the dog-racing track used to be. On Sundays thousands used to flock here to the flea market to buy bric-a-brac of uncertain provenance. Then the stadium was bulldozed in 2003, part of the clearances, displacements and compulsory purchase orders for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
'The last remaining argument against restitution has now been lost'
“We believe we have been the victim of thefts over a long period of time.” This statement in the ten-past-eight interview slot on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday came not, as one might at first imagine, from the Greek culture minister calling for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. Nor was it the head of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments discussing the growing numbers of returns of the Benin Bronzes.
The British Museum is an anachronism - here’s how to fix it
The British Museum is in crisis - PA “The Trustees of the British Museum were extremely concerned when we learnt earlier this year that items of the collection had been stolen,” read the press statement from the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne - speaking in his capacity as chairman of the board, and apparently with no hint of irony.
Are museums obsolete?
Dan Hicks contrasts the outdated A History of the World in 100 Objects with forward-looking ideas surrounding restitution in his own book, The Brutish Museums A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor Allen Lane, 2010 The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution by Dan Hicks Pluto Press, 2020 There are few books in any field of the arts or sciences – and not least in the one in which I work, that of culture, galleries and museums – that have...
Beware the Rise of Anti-Anti-Colonialism
Skip to content Melancholy, Paul Gilroy once argued, is a common reaction to “the loss of a fantasy of omnipotence.” He made this observation in his Wellek Library Lectures, delivered at the University of California Irvine in 2002, and published in 2004 under the title Postcolonial Melancholia.
How NFTs and 3D Printing Are Changing Restitution
Every spring, a group of eleven-year-old pupils from the north Birmingham secondary school I attended as a kid makes a visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University’s Museum of Anthropology and World Archaeology, where I now work as a curator. I always try to meet with the students, and give them a short talk about my job and the history of the museum. On one visit, in 2017, the questions they asked were different.
UK Welcomes Restitution, Just not Anti-Colonialism
“It’s not easy for historians to write the history of missed opportunities, of the stifling and suppression of historical possibilities.” Professor Bénédicte Savoy makes this observation in the opening pages of her ground-breaking book Africa’s Struggle for its Art, which was recently translated into English.
The Risks That Lurk in Europe's “Scramble for Decolonization”
BERLIN, Germany — “How can the debate on restitution be reinvented beyond the return of plundered goods?” asks the introductory text on the wall of Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art. KW is one of the venues for this summer’s 12th Berlin Biennale STILL PRESENT, curated by artist Kader Attia.
Hew Locke Challenges Empire in Birmingham
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND — Nobody seems to know where the statue went after the council had it removed. The figure of Queen Victoria draped in royal robes and holding her orb and scepter had been commissioned at the cost of £2,000 from the sculptor and Royal Academician Thomas Brock. It was a gift from Henry Barber to the city of Birmingham to mark the Diamond Jubilee in the summer of 1897.
Five radical reads from Pluto Press | Round-up | Bookish Magazine — Book-ish
Books don’t solve societal ills. There is no reading list to make a person less racist, no set of texts that will re-configure a mind to care more about disabled bodies or the changing planet. That is perhaps a lie the publishing industry has pushed harder than ever in recent years - if there’s a problem to be solved, there is a book that can do it. It is simply not true. To read, although an active process, results more often in passivity than action.
Unmasking a History of Colonial Violence in a German Museum
Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani, "The Journey"(2022); installed as part of Moving Mountains at the Grassi Museum for Ethnology in Leipzig in March 2022 (all images courtesy Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig by Tom Dachs unless otherwise indicated) What to do with the pedestal of a fallen statue?
What are the next challenges for cultural restitution?
The three short years since the publication of the Sarr-Savoy report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron have seen returns by European and North American museums that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago.
Can We Imagine Public Art Beyond ‘Toxic Monumentality’?
Artists are reclaiming monument-making as a collective, rather than a ‘monohumanist’, project Before he switched to art history, the British sculptor Antony Gormley studied archaeology and anthropology. Obviously. How could any other training possibly have pushed what Skye Sherwin has called Gormley’s ‘one-size-fits-all universalism’ to such an extreme?
The U.K. Has Held Onto the Parthenon Marbles for Centuries—But the Tide Is Turning. Here's Why I Expect Them to Be Returned by 2030 | Artnet News
Twenty-five years ago, in the preface to the 1997 edition of his book The Parthenon Marbles, Christopher Hitchens observed that “those who support the status quo at the British Museum have the great advantage of inertia on their side.” Today, things could hardly be more different.
“An Unfinished Event”: A Review of The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution
is a PhD student at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research interests include, urbanity, rurality, contemporary African cyber literary experience, digital humour, African films and so on. His works have appeared or are forthcoming at such venues,and so on.
Reviewed in the LRB - Vol. 43 No. 16
The Selected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen Elizabeth Bowen £14.99 Buy From the publisher: 'Bowen's stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them' VogueSELECTED AND WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEYA girl shares her secret den.
The Brutish museums: the Benin Bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution
" The Brutish museums: the Benin Bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution ." International Journal of Heritage Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Does George Osborne at the British Museum Signal a Dangerous Blow to the Arts?
Photo by Sebastian Pichler. Courtesy Unsplash “Buller, Buller!” was the cry as they smashed places up. Now a former member of Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club, a student group famed for acts of public vandalism, is to chair the board of trustees of the British Museum. They were immortalised in Evelyn Waugh’s 1928 novel Decline and Fall as the ‘Bollinger Club’. A posed photograph of the Bullingdon class of 1993 shows George Osborne standing at the edge of the group.
Let’s Keep Colston Falling
The statue of the slave trader is now on display in a museum, a year after it was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protesters ‘When people die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art.
The Roundup Top Ten for May 14, 2021
by Nikita Shepard "Tracing the ugly history of conservative efforts to combat school desegregation, welfare, reproductive freedom and gay and lesbian rights by claiming threats to children helps us understand why politicians today think they can gain votes by brutalizing vulnerable children in the name of protecting them."
Comment | Britain stole the royal, sacred Benin Bronzes from Nigeria—so why is Germany leading their return?
British soldiers with looted art treasures from the Royal Palace in Benin © 2020 The Trustees of the British Museum “Colonial history told by British historians is a glorification of inhuman conquest”, the artist Victor Ehikhamenor wrote on Twitter over the weekend. Rumours were beginning to circulate that Benin Bronzes may not be displayed at Berlin’s new Humboldt-Forum, and steps towards permanent returns are being taken by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.
New Books | The Brutish Museums
This is a lightly edited excerpt from The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Pluto Press, 2020) by Dan Hicks. A theory of taking We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition.
Ten excellent books of 2020
Editor’s note: We present 10 excellent books for your consideration, in no particular order. Happy reading! 1. Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, by Vijay Prashad In Washington Bullets, Vijay Prashad writes about the history of CIA- and IMF-backed coups from the onset of the Cold War to the present in Guatemala, Venezuela, Congo, Indonesia, Brazil, and elsewhere.
How 19th-Century European Colonial Powers Raced to Scoop Up the Benin Bronzes Amid a Program of Imperial Destruction
In his acclaimed new book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, archaeologist, anthropologist, and Oxford’s Pitt-Rivers Museum curator Dan Hicks investigates the motivations behind the British raid on the Benin Palace in 1897, which led to treasures being distributed around Western collections.
Gayle's Christmas Picks 2020 | Booklists
Gayle's Christmas Picks 2020 Order the whole list via our online store.
Art Lovers Movie Club: Larry Achiampong
Welcome to the Art Lovers Movie Club, where every week you’ll find a selection of artists’ videos available exclusively online at artreview.com for seven days. A lack of positive change in political and social life leads people to frustration and despair.
Forensic Architecture release investigation into Mark Duggan killing
Forensic Architecture has publicly released an investigation into the police killing of Mark Duggan for the first time. Duggan’s death in 2011 resulted in widespread protest and rioting throughout London in which five people died and more than 3000 were arrested. Lawyers acting for Duggan’s family commissioned Forensic Architecture to investigate in 2018, following their unsuccessful 2017 appeal against the inquest verdict that he was killed lawfully.
Artworld news roundup 6 - 12 June 2020
London galleries to reopen by appointment Galleries in London’s West End have announced their reopening (by appointment) from next week – following the classification of art galleries as ‘non-essential retail’ businesses in the government’s easing of lockdown restrictions.
Why Colston Had to Fall
‘Dialogue’ has stifled action for decades – ridding our cities of monuments to white supremacy is about dismantling systems of oppression It can be tricky, we learn from the rolling news coverage of COVID-19, to put your finger on the precise time and place at which a disease emerged. The same is true for the epidemiology of anti-blackness.
King Leopold II statue in Antwerp removed following #BlackLivesMatter protests
City authorities in Antwerp have removed a statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II after it was daubed in paint and set on fire. The action came following a week of protests in the country against racism, with a particular focus on how Belgium memorialises its colonial past. Statue of King Leopold II in Antwerp removed.
Courage and the Artworld
We might fondly cling to the notion of artists as risk-takers; the reality, for observers, is that artists are held back or holding back One side-effect of having an antiauthoritarian personality is that if you announce you’re going to do something, or that you’re not going to, then you become an authority figure to yourself and, quite possibly, end up defying your own edict.
What to See in Seoul (Between Lockdowns)
A brief window of cautious openings included Gallery Hyundai’s 50th anniversary and an exhibition exploring the politics of the family at MMCA It ain’t over ’til it’s over. Whether discussing a closely contested sports match or a debilitating global epidemic, the same lesson applies.
‘Postracialism Was a Reactionary Fantasy’: Touré F. Reed’s Case Against Race Reductionism
Toward Freedom explains how our understanding of racial disparities became abstracted from the political-economic forces that generate them US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden recently attracted criticism when he exclaimed at the end of an interview on US radio show The Breakfast Club, “If you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”.
History Lessons, No 11: An Interview with F.N. Souza
F.N. Souza, Self-Portrait, 1961, oil on board, 61 x 76 cm. Courtesy: The Ruth Borchard Collection and Piano Nobile, London ‘Where’s my M.B.E.? Where’s the retrospective at the Whitechapel?’ In this interview from May 1966 – while settled in London, shortly before his move to New York – the artist and founding member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group discusses alcoholism, the native jealousies of the British artworld, and life as a compulsive painter.
Mercy Hospital: the Drawings of Ida Applebroog
The artist’s works, exhibited at London’s Freud Museum, are fraught with psychological angst ‘But nobody could climb through that pattern – it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads,’ says the narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’.
Art Lovers Movie Club: Shezad Dawood
Welcome to the Art Lovers Movie Club, where every week you’ll find a selection of artists’ videos available exclusively online at artreview.com for seven days. Over the course of five weeks, artreview.com is screening an episode from London-based Shezad Dawood’s ongoing ten-part film cycle Leviathan (2017–). The screenings form part of a collaboration between ArtReview, Modern Forms, David Roberts Art Foundation and The Ryder, showcasing the first five episodes of this ambitious project.
Before the Lockdown, the Public Was Agitating for a Revolution in the Way Museums Operate. Will This Crisis Finally Force Through Change?
In the early evening of Wednesday, February 26, the crowd thronged the opening of “Young Rembrandt” at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. We shook hands and brushed shoulders, air-kissed or embraced our friends, and leaned in to continue conversations as the director’s welcome rang through the thick atmosphere of wine and canapés.
The Days Before Yesterday
Can we return to a time when the artworld was creative rather than professional? For those of us who work in the artworld, a pause in operations creates a narrative arc: there’s the starting point of your actual experience and the currently imposed endpoint. My own storyline begins in the sketchy mid-1990s, after I left art school, and leads, for now, to the hypertrophic, globalised behemoth that lately stopped in its tracks. Misty-eyed nostalgia is a risk to be navigated, looking back.
Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond
By Dan Hicks and Sarah Mallet Hardback Kindle EPUB Open Access Published May 22, 2019 Page count 154 pages ISBN 978-1529206180 Dimensions 198 x 129 mm Imprint Bristol University Press GBP 47.99 Add to basket Click to order from North America, Canada and South America Published May 22, 2019 Page count 154 pages ISBN 978-1529206227 Dimensions Imprint Bristol University Press GBP 16.99Buy from Amazon.co.uk Click to order from North America, Canada and South America Published May 22, 2019 Page...
Conversation Piece: Necrography - Death-Writing in the Colonial Museum
“Conversation Piece” is a British Art Studies series that draws together a group of contributors to respond to an idea, provocation, or question. Readers can also join in by adding a response at the bottom of the page. Provocation by Dan Hicks, Curator and Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University DOI DOI When it comes to the study of artworks as material culture, there are few more familiar idioms than that of the “life-history” of the object.
the A303 is a crucial part of Stonehenge's setting
Stonehenge has a traffic problem. The A303 has been the UK government’s preferred trunk road from London to the West Country since 1958 – but it runs within 165 metres of the 5,000-year-old monument. Narrowing to a single carriageway, it slows many a summertime car journey. The bottleneck brings noise and pollution, and presents a barrier to exploring the landscape on foot.
Here's why you should care about the scrapping of A-level anthropology
At first the voices were predictable. With art history and archaeology announced as the latest A-levels set to be scrapped, TV presenter Tony Robinson condemned this “barbaric act”. The Council for British Archaeology warned of a national shortage of archaeologists. And sculptor Anish Kapoor complained that “the humanities are under assault”. Of course the old accusations that art history serves only a cultural elite were trotted out by the Guardian.
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