The skull was offered for sale by the auction house on November 11 as a ‘power object’ with blue, gray and red pigments.
According to the initiators of the protest, five scientists from universities in Berlin, Benin and Cameroon, selling ancestral remains for profit goes against the bereavement practices and spiritual rituals in West African countries.
According to the Dutch specialist in predatory art Jos van Beurden, who also signed the letter, the auction house is probably not legally culpable, but it no longer fits ‘morally’ in this time to trade in human remains that were probably brought to Europe in colonial times.
