Museum Collections and the Legacies of Imperialism: Curating Colonial Violence at the Horniman

French President Macron's restitution report of November 2018, highlighted the need for museum directors in Europe to publicly articulate their position on the colonial legacies within their institutions. As ethical museum practice is now rethought, collections derived through colonial encounters, violence and dispossessions have come under renewed scrutiny. Whilst this has focused on provenance research and de-centring museum narratives through co-curation and collaboration with communities of provenance, contemporary debates about institutional decolonisation and structural racism rightly question whether current approaches go far enough?
This project directly addresses this tension by examining the historical provenance and context of collections acquired through colonial military campaigns and direct violence held at the Horniman Museum. Crucially, it seeks to think critically about the practice through which such research is conducted, publicly communicated and acted on.
The project will help the Museum think critically and reflexively about the processes through which knowledge of imperial artefacts is created and disseminated, how it may be used to foster new public conversations, debates and relationships, at both a local and national level, and how it might be put to action to address the deep structural legacies of Britain's violent colonial past. The research will be framed by current academic debates on restitution and reparative histories of imperialism.