The Economist - USA (2020-08-08)

68 Books & arts The EconomistAugust 8th 2020

2 The smalltradingpartywasbait, Mr

Hicksbelieves,a meanstojustifythedis-

membermentoftheBeninempire.British

soldiersseizedandsoldover5,000bronze

objects(nooneisquitesurepreciselyhow

many). They are now dispersed among

morethan 160 institutions,includingthe

BritishMuseumwhich,witharound 900

pieces,hasthesinglebiggesthoard.There

arealsomanyprivatecollectors,someof

them descendants of soldiers who took

partinthesacking.

“TothepeopleofBeninandtoNigerians

generally theBeninBronzesrepresent a

greatartisticandspiritualloss,”saysBen

Okri,aNigerianpoetandnovelist.They

“areaconstantreminderoftheWestern

disrespectfortheirtraditionsandtheirhis-

tory.”Museumsthatfailtoacknowledge

thisloss,andthedestructionassociated

withit,colludeinthatviolence,MrHicks

argues.“Thearrivaloflootintothehands

ofWesterncurators,itscontinueddisplay

inourmuseumsand itshidingawayin

privatecollections,wasnotsomeart-his-

toricalincident,”hesays,“butanenduring

brutalitythatisrefreshedeverydaythata

museum...opensitsdoors.”

Thetitleofhisbook,“TheBrutishMuse-

ums”,isspelledoutinthesamefontthat

theBritishMuseumuses,andthecover’s

hue matches the museum’s stone-clad

walls.It isa clearchallengetothe267-year-

oldinstitution,which mostlyrefuses to

handbackartworkstothecountriesthat

producedthem.“Ithinkit’smisleadingto

calltheBritishMuseumthebrutishmuse-

um,”saysHartwigFischer,itsdirector,who

hasnotreadthebook.“Themuseumisen-

gagedwiththepartnersinBeninCityina

long-term, comprehensive collaboration

thataimsata sustainabledevelopmentof

culturalheritage.”

TheroyalcourtinBeninCityplansto

builda museumofitsown,thoughwork

hasnotbegunandithasyettomakea for-

malrequesttothePittRiversortheBritish

Museum.“Buthowmany timesdothey

reallyhave toask?” MrHicks says. “We

shouldn’thaveanythinginthat’snicked.

It’sassimpleasthat.”LastmonthOxford

University,whichoverseesthePittRivers,

publisheditsformalproceduresfordeal-

ingwithrestitutionclaimsforobjectstak-

enunderduress.

Beyondhisownmuseum,MrHickshas

joinedforceswithMsSavoy,theco-author

of the French report, on a £700,000

($915,000)researchprojectintotheorigins

ofcollectionsinBritainandGermany.The

OpenSocietyFoundations(osf) hasalso

pledged$15mtohelpAfricanorganisations

reclaimartefacts.Using$1mofthatgrant,

MrHicks isestablishingamuseumnet-

workcalledActionforRestitutiontoAfri-

ca,workingwithcuratorsinEuropeaswell

asinEgypt,GhanaandSouthAfrica.“We

understood...thatwecould withourin-

vestmentcreatesomerealbindingconnec-

tivetissuebetweenacademics,activists,

artists, civil-society actors and govern-

mentalactors,”saysPatrickGaspard,presi-

dentoftheosf.

Therearestillheartsandmindsto win

overwithininstitutions.In 2019 MrHicks

launched#BeninDisplays,a Twittercam-

paignwhichurgesmuseumswithBenin

collectionsto providehonestcontextual

information.Hehopesthattheefforts of

curators,aswellasactivists,willcause a

reckoningoverrestitutionthatmany be-

lieveshouldhavehappenedlongago. 7

I

naugust 2019anextraordinaryplaque

wasunveiledatBorgarfjordur,inwestern

Iceland. It commemoratesOkjökull, the

firstof thecountry’sglacierstobecom-

pletelylosttoclimatechange.Okjökull was

declared“dead”in2014,whenitwas no

longer thick enough to flow across the

landscape,asithad donefor centuries.

Framed as “A letter to the future”, the

plaquereads(inIcelandicandEnglish):

Inthenext 200 yearsallourglaciersare ex-

pectedtofollowthesamepath.Thismonu-

mentistoacknowledgethatweknow what

ishappeningandwhatneedstobedone.

Onlyyouknowif wedidit.

Along with the date, the memorial carries

the words “415ppm CO 2 ”: last summer, at-

mospheric carbon dioxide was measured

at 415 parts per million, higher than at any

point since humans have lived on Earth.

The text was written by Andri Snaer

Magnason, an Icelandic author. As he notes

in his haunting new book, “On Time and

Water”, the amount of carbon dioxide in

the Earth’s atmosphere has soared at

shocking speed. At the beginning of the In-

dustrial Revolution, the ratio was about

280ppm; by 1958 it stood at 315ppm. It is

now rising by about two to three parts per

million every year.

The author’s aim is to give readers a

proper sense of geological time, so that

they grasp, at a visceral level, how human

activity is damaging the planet. He calls the

current transformation “mythological”, af-

fecting “the roots of everything we think,

choose, produce and believe. It affects

everyone we know, everyone we love.”

These high-speed changes, including

the rise of the world’s waters, will alter life

irrevocably within a more familiar time

frame: “All this will happen during the life-

time of a child who is born today and lives

to be my grandmother’s age, 95.”

There are plenty of books about the cli-

mate crisis. But Mr Andri Snaer Magna-

son’s perspective on his country’s environ-

ment is unique and compelling. His earlier

book, “Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for

a Frightened Nation”, was a hymn to Ice-

land’s highlands and a critique of the gov-

ernment’s decision to build dams to pro-

vide power for aluminium smelting. Now

he traces his family’s links to the land-

scape, notably those of his grandparents

Hulda and Arni. They were early stalwarts

of the Icelandic Glaciological Society, and

spent their honeymoon in 1956 investigat-

ing the frozen world of Vatnajökull, an ice

cap of 8,000 square kilometres—for now,

at least—which was almost entirely unex-

plored in the mid-20th century. In old age

Hulda recalls the indescribable smell of the

glacier. “When you’re up on Vatnajökull,”

she tells her grandson, “everything disap-

pears; you forget everything. An infinite

vastness. An absolute dream.”

“On Time and Water” is part family

memoir, part scientific analysis, part med-

itation on subjects as wide-ranging as the

“Poetic Edda”—Iceland’s medieval literary

treasury—and the role of the Dalai Lama in

21st-century climate politics. The author

tries to understand, and tries to make the

reader understand, why the climate crisis

is not widely perceived as a distinct, trans-

formative event in the manner of, say, the

fall of the Berlin Wall or the attacks of Sep-

tember 11th 2001. The fundamental pro-

blem, as this book elucidates, is time. Cli-

mate change is a disaster in slow motion,

and yet “slow” is a great deal faster than

many people seem able to comprehend. 7

Climatechange

A glacier’space

OnTimeandWater.ByAndriSnaer

Magnason.TranslatedbyLyttonSmith.

Serpent’sTail; 352 pages;£16.99.Tobe

publishedinAmericabyOpenLetterin

March2021;$26

A slippery slope