Ore Ogunbi
Appearances
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
When I got there, it was not very diverse environment. So settling in in that first term was quite difficult because I just felt like I couldn't find people who I could relate with.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
You go to any college dining hall, you go to prestigious parts of the college, really historical parts of any college in Cambridge, and it's likely to be covered in paintings of old white men who have made some significant contribution to the culture. There's never going to be a black person on those walls.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
In the same way that there was art on the walls, there's things on shelves, there's a whole bunch of things kind of lying around, I didn't notice it. It felt very much like it was hiding in plain sight.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
But the second he drew my attention to it, obviously, I picked up on it the next time we went into the dining hall. It's not massive. It's not... too much bigger than your laptop. But it was sat on this shelf.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
This piece of art was bequeathed to the college by William Neville.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
We were asked to present to the Ethical Affairs Committee. And yeah, they asked us a bunch of questions about where it's going to go. Can they look after it?
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
I don't think there's anything more we could have done. It just felt like no progress was being made. I mean, I just, I'd given up on this thing happening, to be quite honest. But I was still going to these meetings, convincing myself that, I don't know, maybe this one next meeting would be different.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
By the time I graduated, I was like, OK, they've succeeded in wearing me down. I'm not screaming and kicking up a fuss about this anymore. It's clearly not going to happen.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
Which was basically, this art or this piece of art was bequeathed to the college by William Neville and was looted from Benin in the Punitive Expedition of 1897. Something to that effect.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
And to see it happening, especially when you had, well, I had definitely given up on the idea that it ever would. It was crazy.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
I was embarrassed that I hadn't picked up on that. I know enough about African art and I'm familiar enough with what those kinds of antiques look like. My dad has been collecting similar work since I was a child.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
This isn't just a pretty thing to sit on a shelf. It's not just a fancy trophy of your war. It's history. It means things to people and has meant things to people for centuries. So you can't understand this object without all of that history because it's not just an object. It is all those things.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
Then the anger began to seep in because I'm just like, what on earth? Like, in what world is this okay? What is going on? And that to me was when the clock started turning and then we kind of set off down the rabbit hole.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
I'm an Africa correspondent at The Economist, and I'm also a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge.
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The Kingdom Behind Glass
I've lived between England and Nigeria my whole life. I was born in England, I moved to Nigeria when I was seven, and I've been back and forth between both countries ever since. And so university-wise, my dad always really wanted me to go to Cambridge. In his view, you know, the best place I could end up, which I understand why people see it that way.