A HITHERTO unheralded treasure of the National Museum of Ireland has to be this brass head from Benin city, Nigeria. It is registered as 1898:190, having been acquired from a dealer called WD Webster. The head was used as the base for a tusk on an ancestral altar in the Oba's Palace and was acquired by the museum following the destruction of Benin and its looting by British troops in 1897.
It is claimed that many of the objects in Benin were taken because of their association with the cult of human sacrifice, but, in reality, they were largely used to defray expedition costs. The museum also has a brass jug from Benin.
The museum's sub-Saharan African collection contains a number of items, including baskets,cloth, pottery and ritual items collected by Sir Roger Casement. As British consul in the Congo Free State in 1903, he investigated the inhumane treatment of the native population by the commercial agents of the king of Belgium. His report led to Belgium taking responsibility for the Congo, rather than having it used as an official fiefdom of the king. The museum's African collections were written up by the Irish-born ethnographer WA Hart in the spring 1995 issue of African Arts. The Benin head, which is 40cm high, recalls batteries of such objects in the great ethnographical museums of London and Berlin. It will accorded due prominence in the soon to be built ethnographic galleries at Collins Barracks. It will go on show along with other African treasures and the museum's world famous Maori, South Seas/Pacific collection, some of which was collected on Captain Cook's voyages, before eventually making its way via Trinity College to the National Museum.
The museum's ethnographical collection has not always fared as well as it should have. It was decanted from its Kildare Street exhibition gallery in 1979 and stored at Merrion Row before being transferred to its present storage at Collins Barracks. This collection constitutes a treasure of international importance and at long last it will have permanent contexted display in the second phase of the museum's development at Collins Barracks. This will start before the end of the year and should be ready in four years. At the very least, the informed use of this glorious collection will show that we're now mature enough and possessed of sufficient generosity to study, display and cherish artefacts from very different and geographically (if not altogether culturally) distant places. Pat Wallace is director of the National Museum of Ireland