When Olugbile Holloway stands before returned artefacts from Benin City, he is not only a museum director. He is the public face of a long campaign to bring home objects taken during colonial conflicts, and now that effort has won international recognition.
The National Commission for Museums and Monuments director-general was named to TIME Magazine’s inaugural TIME100 Art list, a compilation of 100 people the magazine says are shaping the future of art, according to a report by BellaNaija.
BellaNaija reported that Holloway was listed in the Leaders category for his role as a repatriation advocate. The profile links his recognition to progress in returning looted items from Benin City, taken by British troops in 1897.
The article said Holloway helped secure a transfer agreement signed in Leiden in February 2025. That agreement, BellaNaija reported, paved the way for the physical return in June 2025 of 119 Benin Bronzes from the Netherlands, described in the piece as the largest single repatriation of the artefacts to date.
According to the same report, Holloway later oversaw the return of more than 100 additional artefacts from the University of Cambridge. BellaNaija attributed part of these outcomes to an approach Holloway developed with the Oba of Benin, centred on a 20-page agreement setting out shared commitments to the future of the objects.
The BellaNaija account quoted Chika Okeke-Agulu, an expert in African diaspora art history, as saying these agreements grew out of Holloway’s ability to resolve long-standing confusion about rightful ownership of the bronzes.
The report also said Holloway is negotiating over Nigerian antiquities held at the British Museum, and noted that British legislation currently restricts that institution from permanently deaccessioning items in its collection.
BellaNaija named other African cultural figures included in the TIME100 Art list. The article cited Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui in the Titans section, Kenyan painter Michael Armitage in Innovators, and ceramicist Dame Magdalene Odundo among the Titans.
The listing on the TIME100 Art list and the accounts of the repatriation agreements in Leiden and at Cambridge are reported by BellaNaija and set out the recent milestones that the NCMM director-general has been associated with, according to the same source.
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