FIFTEEN COLONIAL THEFTS, a guide to looted African heritage in museums

284pp., illus., hardback, d.w., Pluto Press, London, 2024

ISBN:‎ 9780745349527

Foreword by Peju Layiwola.

A collection of essays on fifteen African artefacts, effigies and ancestral remains that were looted at the height of the imperial era and brought to Western museums.

Contributions include:

"IsiHlangu from the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879: 'We need to infuse African-ness in museums'" Yan LeGall in conversation with Mwelela Cele

"Where are Nehanda's Remains? A Zimbabwean search in the context of shifting museum politics" by Njabulo Chipangura, Farai Chabata and Lennon Mhishi.

"This book brings much needed diversity to a debate that has for too long focused on a very few cases often mainly seen from a European perspective. It is a great introduction to the history behind the restitution process and the confrontation of different perspectives that it engenders." Felicity Bodenstein, lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Heritage, Sorbonne Université

"By focussing on colonial violence in such a straightforward way, this volume not only reminds us of the nature of colonialism itself, but also of the unabated necessity to continue scrutinising museum collections and work towards restitution." Larissa Förster, Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Sela Adjei is a multidisciplinary artist with degrees in Communication Design and African Art and Culture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. He received his PhD in African Studies from the University of Ghana, Legon. He is a lecturer at the University of Media, Arts and Communication.

Yann LeGall is a postdoctoral researcher on the project "The Restitution of Knowledge: Artefacts as Archives in the (Post)Colonial Museum" at the Institute for Art History, Technical University, Berlin. Previously a fellow at the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms, University of Potsdam, his is also a member of the initiatives Berlin Postkolonial and Postcolonial Potsdam.