Purchase

Donors, especially those who work in the art dealing business scour the world to buy art. During the late 16th and early 17th century, missionaries and particularly colonial soldiers are said to be actively collecting and selling cultural property. For instant in the case of the Benin Bronzes, many of the soldiers that took part in the ransacking of the Benin Kingdom took objects for themself (Hicks, 2020).

Most of the objects in the Ashanti collection at the American Museum of Natural History were purchased by their donors. These objects purchased by the donors and subsequently gifted to the museum mostly consist of Gold weights. Today, displayed in the Hall of African Peoples is 450 gold weight and other gold accessories like scale and gold dust container.

Fig. 23. Gold weights displayed at the Hall of African Peoples. Image by Abdul-Alim

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Gold weights displayed at the Hall of African Peoples. Image by Abdul-Alim
Fig. 39. Asante Gold weights

Fig. 37. Demonstration of how the gold was weighed with gold weights.

Fig. 40. A display of Asante gold weights at the Hall of African Peoples

Fig. 41. A display of Asante gold weights at the Hall of African Peoples

Fig. 42.