In a little over a week, the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Benin City, Nigeria, will open the MOWAA Institute, the first completed building on a planned 15-acre campus that will also include a contemporary art exhibition space (Rainforest Gallery), among other facilities. The complex is expected to be completed in 2028.
On the eve of the opening, ancient times Magazine publishes an updated report on pre-construction archaeological investigations conducted at the Institute’s construction site and Rainforest Gallery. The MOWAA Archeology Project, which runs from 2022 to 2024, is a partnership between MOWAA, the British Museum and the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), with Cambridge Archeology Unit and Wessex Archeology as delivery partners.
Benin City is located on the ruins of Edo, the capital of the powerful Benin Kingdom (c. 1200-1897 AD). It was a pre-colonial empire that at its peak had a complex political structure, vast trade networks and advanced art culture, famous for its bronze sculptures and reliefs. The kingdom resisted becoming a British protectorate in the 1880s, culminating in a British military attack; the city’s royal palace was destroyed and its art treasures, including thousands of bronzes, looted.
This archaeological survey focuses on the palace complex and is the first archaeological survey since the 1960s. It includes non-invasive methods such as excavation and ground-penetrating radar. Radiocarbon dating of the unearthed artefacts shows that they span the pre-establishment of the Kingdom of Benin, its collapse and subsequent colonial and post-colonial eras.
The new MOWAA Institute will be a center for the research, storage, conservation and presentation of archaeological finds and home to repatriated objects such as Benin bronzes.
