UCSC Archaeological Research Center

Frontiers in Archaeology Fall Lecture

The Brutish Museums and the 'Decade of Returns'

Professor Dan Hicks, FSA

Curator and Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, University of Oxford Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford

This talk introduces some of the key ideas in Dan's last book, The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution (Pluto Press 2020).  In late 2024, half way through what the book described as 'a decade of returns', it considers how questions around understanding colonial history, returning stolen objects, and the wider work of anti-colonialism and anti-racism in museums have changed and developed. The talk will consider the future of the legacy institutions of museums of 'world culture', and the ongoing implication of the legacy academic disciplines of archaeology and anthropology in forms of cultural supremacy.