20 May 2026
Another Gathering: The Beauty We Inherit is organized within the framework of the exhibition Back to Benin: New Art, Ancient Legacy, currently on view at Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle until 7 June 2026. The exhibition brings together ten contemporary artists of Edo background in dialogue with Ama O Ghe Ehen, a 18th-century bronze plaque depicting a mudfish, and its restitution from the Netherlands to Benin. Although artworks and objects have recently been returned to Benin, the historical, spiritual, cultural, and artistic rupture caused by their violent removal cannot be reversed. Recently, the Wereldmuseum Leiden has been involved in its own process of restitution and repatriation of Benin Bronzes that were housed in the museum's own collection. On Wednesday 19 February 2025, a special and meaningful ceremony took place at Wereldmuseum Leiden, whereby the restitution of 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria was signed: 113 art objects from the National Collection and 6 art objects from the collection of the municipality of Rotterdam. Though, the Wereldmuseum Leiden and the Museum de Fundatie worked with different processes of restitution based on the status of their collections, these two institutions have directly engaged and connected to the questions of ownership and absence that this collaborative gathering is grounded within.
This symposium asks: What does it mean to be in the wake of absence? Can absence become a site of imagination and knowledge? In what ways do spiritual, scientific, artistic and curatorial practices contribute to reconfiguring absence into new forms of presence, meanings and relations? Another Gathering: The Beauty We Inherit will bring together artists, scholars, writers, and curators some of whom have participated in the exhibition, its development, or its spaces to explore these questions through keynotes, screenings, conversations, and sonic and visual lectures, as well as performances.
