Decolonising our Museums

Various funded initiatives have arisen from this collaboration, including two successful applications for funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to celebrate Windrush Day in Brighton Museum.

From conversations with network members and others we are very aware of the need to decolonise RPMT and its collections. To this end we have:

• Formed a Decolonising the Museum working group, first meeting in March 2020
• We are researching the history and contemporary meanings of a collection of objects from Botswana as a major partner in the University of Sussex’s Making African Connections project
• Published a statement on Contestable items in Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust collection committing to learning more about the origins of these collections and expressing our openness to discussing claims for return
• Led a major HLF funded initiative Fashioning Africa, which sought to develop a collecting strand documenting post-1960s African fashion and to pioneer a collaborative approach to collections development. This also supported the Fashion Cities Africa exhibition in Brighton Museum which has toured internationally. An overview of this project can be found on the Fashioning Africa website.
• Ensured RPMT’s contribution to professional discussion of these issues through representation on the Museum Ethnographers Group, an Arts Council England steering group developing new guidance on responding to repatriation requests and a Museums Association working group on decolonising museums

Two recent episodes of our recent Voices of the Royal Pavilion & Museums podcast contain an extensive discussion of practical approaches to decolonisation:

• Reframing South coast Colonialism with Dr Helen Mears and Sarah Lee
• Disrupting South Coast Colonialism with Rachel Heminway-Hurst and Edith Ojo

We have recently made a statement in response to the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. We invite those interested in collaborating with us on our ‘Decolonising Museums’ working group to get in touch using either the email address on the statement or our general contact form.

Representations in our collection

Our Designated World Art collections contain more than 15,000 objects from Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas. Key items from these collections can be found on display in the World Stories Young Voices gallery in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.

The work of the World Art curatorial team is profiled in several posts on our blog, including using photographs by James Henry Green to help promote the Kachin culture of Myanmar (formerly Burma).

The Willett Collection of Popular Pottery contains numerous depictions of BAME people, and was the subject of Black Britannia, a past exhibition in Brighton Museum.