Heritage Management and Community Engagement: The Story of the National Museum, Benin City, Nigeria
Heritage Management and Community Engagement: The Story of the National Museum, Benin City, Nigeria
Author(s): Austine Emifoniye
Department of Creative Arts
University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria
Email: aemifoniye@unilag.edu.ng
Edited By
Type: Article
Country: Nigeria
Language: English
Content:: Academic
Source: Edo State Archives
Timeline: African age - From 1960 (zama za Africa)
Published: 2024
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Summary
Abstract
Heritage management is essential to the preservation of a people’s
tangible and intangible culture. The heritage of a people may change over
time or become extinct in the absence of conscious preservation, as is
evident with many African cultures. Central to the preservation of
heritages, is the engagement of communities in a dynamic process of
continuity. The Great Benin kingdom engineered this process with the
institution of the guild system, which served the royal court of the Oba
(king). Although the guild is no longer practised strictly as court art today,
the system is preserved as community art centres run by descendants of
the ancient guild. Artisans in Benin City, play an important role as
custodians of the culture and system, while the National Museum, Benin
City houses some of the important relics of the Benin kingdom.
This article looks at the history of the National Museum, and the structure in place for
heritage preservation. It also examined the role played by Igun bronze
casters who are important custodians of the arts and culture of the Benin
kingdom. The study is qualitative research that relied on historical content
and ethnographic methods, interviews and online publications for its data.
Much of the ethnographic data was collected while the researcher was
engaged in ?eldwork in Benin City. His observation of the Benin guild
workers, informal interviews and visits to the National Museum, Benin
City are important parts of the data. Data collected were evaluated from
observation assessment, text and interview analysis. The ?ndings are
presented within the general content of the essay. The study concludes
that, although the National Museum, Benin City is an institutionalized
heritage management organ of government, the preservation and
continuity of important aspects of the tangible and intangible heritages of
388 International Journal of Current Research in the Humanities (IJCRH) No. 26 2022
the Benin kingdom is been done also by the bronze casters who have
continued with the ancient culture of bronze casting. This synergy,
though informal, is a signi?cant module, which may be adopted by other
museums with similar structures.
Keywords: Art, Heritage, Benin Kingdom, Community, Culture,
Management, Museum.
Description
