How to Cite

Bodenstein, Felicity: The Global Market Trajectories of Two Brass Leopards from Benin City (1897–1953), in Troelenberg, Eva-Maria, Schankweiler, Kerstin and Messner, Anna Sophia (Eds.): Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2021 (Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality, Volume 9), p. 132–139. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10415

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https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766
ISBN 978-3-96822-049-9 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-96822-050-5 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-3-96822-051-2 (Softcover)

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06/10/2021

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Authors

Felicity Bodenstein

The Global Market Trajectories of Two Brass Leopards from Benin City (1897–1953)

Abstract The art market trajectory of these two brass leopards, looted in Benin in 1897, illustrates the relationship between processes of commodi­fication and changes in the narratives about African art; processes that are often visualized in the readily communicating circuits of commercial galler­ies and museum exhibitions. Read in direct relationship to their successive displacements, the price history of these objects attests to the stark eco­nomic asymmetries, as well as to the difference of their cultural meaning, between the place from which the piece originated and the place where it is today and to the long history of enrichment that such objects provide through their commodification.

Keywords Benin City, Leopards, Benin Bronzes, Art market, Provenance, Resale