Plaque

1. Oba Ovonramwen (r. 1888-97, died 1914), Benin City, Kingdom of Benin, before 1897; taken during the British military raid by George W. Neville (died 1929), Weybridge, England, 1897; by descent to his heirs, 1929; sold, Foster, London, May 1, 1930, lot. 53 [according to correspondence with Jean-Louis Paudrat in curatorial object file] to Ernest Ascher (died early 1970s), Paris, to at least July 15, 1932 [Jean-Louis Paudrat correspondence mentioned above]. Paul Vamos, Paris, Nov. 25, 1932. Ladislas Szecsi (Ladislas Segy, died 1988), Paris then New York, by March 1933; sold to the Art Institute, 1933.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Benin, Sept. 21–November 17, 1968, cat. 19.
• New Orleans, La., Delgado Museum, January 30, 1969.
• Vienna, Museum fur Völkerkunde, Benin–Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria, May 9–Sept. 3, 2007, cat. p. 241 (ill); traveled to Paris, Musée du quai Branly, Oct. 2, 2007–Jan. 6, 2008; Ethnologisches Museum-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Feb. 7–May 25, 2008; Art Institute of Chicago, July 10–Sept. 21, 2008.

• Helen MacKenzie, Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, vol. 28, no.2 (Feb.1934), pp. 19–20 (ill.).
• Allen Wardwell, Primitive Art in the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1965), pl. 47.
• Melville Herskovits, The Backgrounds of African Art (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1967), p. 24 (ill.).
• Mary Hancock Buxton, Benin. Exh. cat. (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1986), cat. 19 (ill).
• Kathleen Bickford Berzock, "African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago," African Arts, vol. 32, no. 4 (Winter 1999), p. 24, fig. 8.
• Barbara Plankensteiner, ed. Benin Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria. Exh. cat. (Kunsthistorisches Museum mit MVK und OTM/Snoeck Publishers, 2007), pg. 241 (ill.)
• Constantine Petridis et al., Speaking of Objects: African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2020), cat. no. 31, pp. 92-94 (ill.).