Museum Discovers Colonialism Was Bad, 300 Years Later
The Guardian hails Manchester Museum's 'Africa Hub' for bravely confronting 'colonial-era silences' by asking visitors to identify objects. This comes centuries after these items were, as the museum delicately puts it, 'traded, collected, looted or preserved' by the British Empire. One might wonder if the museum's previous efforts to 'uncover hidden histories' involved simply reading the
inventories their predecessors filed, which presumably declared, 'Source: Somewhere in Africa, acquired via 'expeditions.'' This isn’t a humble quest for knowledge; it’s a public crowdsourcing plea for provenance research they should have done before calling it a collection. It's like a bank asking depositors to name the person who robbed them years ago, after having the robber's signature on file
the whole time. How many priceless cultural items must sit in European basements before museums stop asking for 'insights' and start discussing repatriation?