For more than a decade, a collection of masterful works from the West African Kingdom of Benin have held pride of place at the Museum of Fine Arts, in a dedicated gallery just off the museum’s central rotunda.
Now, the gallery is slated to close by the end of the month after the wealthy donor who had pledged the pieces to the museum took the extraordinary step of asking for their return.
The exceedingly rare development came as the museum sought to transfer ownership of the historic works to their land of origin.
The artworks, pledged by award-winning filmmaker and banking heir Robert Owen Lehman, had long presented the museum with a daunting ethical question: Many of the sculptures were forcibly taken during a bloody raid in 1897, when British troops sacked Benin City, plundering thousands of cast metal figures, heads, and relief plaques from the palace in what is now Nigeria.
Known collectively as the Benin Bronzes, the objects — on display in several museums in the US and Europe — are often viewed as a case study in colonial-era looting. In recent years, a number of those museums have sought to return the pilfered objects to Nigeria, where leaders have called on museums broadly for their return.
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The MFA was attempting to find its own ethical path forward. But the museum, which owns just a handful of the exhibited objects and was promised the rest, was in the difficult position of trying to broker an ownership agreement for a collection it did not itself yet fully own.
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In ongoing discussions, it had hoped to transfer title of the objects in exchange for a long-term loan that would allow them to remain on display in Boston.
“It’s really not appropriate for us to bring them into the collection,” said Victoria Reed, the museum’s senior curator for provenance. “But that means that we do not own them, and therefore we don’t have control over them.”
The tortuous negotiations seemingly dissipated last week when Lehman asked the museum to give him back the disputed bronzes.
“We’re all sad in contemplating this outcome,” said MFA director and chief executive Matthew Teitelbaum. “There’s no moment of celebration or resolution that feels fully satisfying.”
Teitelbaum, who described the return as a “mutual agreement,” said the museum found itself in unusual circumstances. He added that Lehman, whose eponymous foundation recently lost a court battle to retain a painting by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, rescinded the gift after a years-long discussion.
“We were trying to get to a point where the court could assume ownership, and we could ensure display,” said Teitelbaum, who added the museum had been negotiating with the royal palace. “We were making some progress, but without any certainty of outcome.”
Lehman did not respond to a request for comment. A woman who answered the phone at a number under Lehman’s listing said she was “quite certain he has no comment.”
Lehman originally brokered the promised gift of 30-odd objects in 2012 with then-director Malcolm Rogers. They structured the gift so that individual bronzes, which date from the 16th century on, would formally enter the museum’s collection on a staggered timetable.
Today, the MFA has clear title to five of the artworks, which it will retain for the time being. It plans to return the 29 other bronzes to Lehman once staffers have deinstalled the gallery, which is set to close on April 28. The museum will also return two objects from Sierra Leone that were part of the initial pledge.
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Reed said that although it’s not the outcome the museum had hoped for, it also simplifies the MFA’s path ahead.
“What was a very complicated situation has now become far less complicated,” she said. “It positions us now to talk about the five objects that we own, and look towards a resolution that is more in alignment with our stated principles and institutional values.”
The Benin Kingdom — as opposed to the modern country of Benin, which borders Nigeria — was a powerful West African force in the 19th century. But after a group of British officials was killed during a trade dispute in 1897, Britain launched a so-called punitive expedition. Using boats and early machine guns, soldiers slaughtered untold numbers before sacking the royal palace and looting thousands of bronzes, virtuosic works that eventually spread to an estimated 160 museums.
The MFA’s collection of the bronzes has always posed a problem for the museum. Less than a month after it announced the gift in 2012, Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments demanded the museum return the works.
“We have every right in the world to own these beautiful pieces,” Rogers told the Globe at the time.
Rogers had already approached the royal court, where the oba, or king, authorized the MFA’s installation. The oba, who died in 2016, dispatched emissaries to attend the gallery’s 2013 opening, though he did not weigh in on the museum’s long-term ownership of the bronzes.
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Rogers, who retired from the MFA in 2015, did not respond to an interview request.
The current oba, Ewuare II, has been outspoken about the bronzes’ return, and in recent years, numerous museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and some German institutions have moved to repatriate the looted objects.
Those efforts have been complicated by the question of where in Nigeria the restituted objects should go. Museums had negotiated for years with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments. But Nigeria sowed confusion in 2023, when it formally recognized the oba as the rightful owner of the bronzes. The Nigerians sought to clarify the situation earlier this year, when Oba Ewuare II agreed that the commission would pursue repatriation claims.
“There is no more ambiguity,” commission head Olugbile Holloway told Reuters in February. “The oba has given the NCMM the blessing.”
Teitelbaum said that although the MFA has been in conversation with the royal court, the Nigerians have never submitted a renewed ownership claim.
“We initiated the conversations with the court in response to the international context,” he said.
Teitelbaum added that the museum “paused” Lehman’s promised gift in 2021 — indefinitely tabling the formal acquisition of more bronzes — though it continued to exhibit them in the dedicated gallery.
Kelly Hays, who directs the MFA’s Gifts of Art program, said it’s exceedingly rare for a donor and the museum to amend or rescind a pledge.
“They are legally binding enforceable pledges, and we take that seriously,” said Hays, who estimated that fewer than 10 pledges have been altered over the years. “This one has the appearance of being unusual just because of the circumstances, the nature of the collection, and the fact that it’s been on view in a gallery.”
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Teitelbaum said the museum will offer free admission Thursday so visitors can see the bronzes one last time.
In June, the museum plans to display the five bronzes in its Art of Africa Gallery. (It will also display one on loan from Lehman, a commemorative head that left the kingdom before the 1897 attack.)
“We are going to tell the story of objects we have with commitment and with a real sense of pride,” Teitelbaum said, “but there is no doubt there is a loss.”
Malcolm Gay can be reached at malcolm.gay@globe.com. Follow him @malcolmgay.