The publication of Professor Robert L. Tignor's article ‘W. R. Bascom and the Ife bronzes' in Africa a few years ago (1990) aroused my interest, as a former student of this anthropologist, as to whether there was any further correspondence beyond what Tignor employed which would illuminate the controversy, as I felt dissatisfied with some of his interpretations. I was fortunate to have had access to Bascom's personal papers, now on file at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology (formerly the Robert Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley), through the kind assistance of Bascom's widow, Berta Bascom, and of Frank A. Norick at the museum. The letters in the file present a somewhat different view of the role of Bascom in the matter than Tignor does. His article relies largely on US State Department archives (which do include some Bascom correspondence) and upon some published articles by Bascom, by E. H. Duckworth, then editor of Nigeria Magazine and also Nigerian Inspector of Education, and by others. The whole business of the two Ife heads which Bascom acquired throws light on the history of the gradually evolving Nigerian colonial government policy toward antiquities.