The Museum of Gloucester: Our city, Our history
Fig 1: A horse? Vertebra with a face painted and moulded on to the ball joint. The other parts of the bone serve as arms or wings
As part of Black History Month, the Museum of Gloucester wishes to share the work happening as a result of the Monuments Review project.
Its purpose is to have an open conversation about Gloucester’s historic association with the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
It is the responsibility of the Museum to tell a balanced story about the objects we hold. In the past any links to historic slavery were simply not mentioned in our displays or collections. We are now seeking to correct the narrative of our history with the aim to tell a broader story that includes this difficult topic, sometimes called ‘contested history’.
Most recently, the team have been looking at the life of celebrated (and Gloucester born) transatlantic revivalist preacher George Whitefield. The Monuments Review has highlighted that, whilst Whitefield was a remarkable public speaker who undertook many charitable works, he also campaigned for the legalisation of slavery in the colony of Georgia and funded his works with the income from two plantations. This is a side of Whitefield’s life not commonly known about or discussed in Gloucester.
This is why we, at the museum, must discuss contested history. It is about having a broad and accessible history. This is the angle that this review has chosen to follow; how did we get here? You cannot fix it. However, it is about taking a positive approach and understanding three hundred years of traumatic conditions. it’s about being informed about events in the past so that you can understand the present. We all have the obligation to engage with the community, to be informed with true facts with empathy towards normative history.
These conversations would allow people to be more aware of the historical context and having all the facts?
It is important to give a voice to static objects and the people they belong to. Revealing about the way they were sourced, their making, their use and their significance to the detriment of enslaved African people, and to link all these threads in a wider historical context. Thinking about material objects and questions of civility, fashion, wealth and power.
But it’s also thinking about how the museum sector has shifted since 2020 and how we can reflect on current cultural and social issues. What I saw is a cultural emergence which encompasses not being opened to everyone. Attention to materiality, our work went into that direction, looking at objects that were in our stores. How do we look at these objects that affected both those they met and those at home? Looking at these objects with an emotional sense that deserve to be given a voice.
What I’m really interested in is working with objects and got me working in museums and archives and developing ways in which you can work with the community to reinterpret our collections. it’s about thinking entirely in a new methodology for how you unpack objects within museums in an open way with curated narratives and allow not just curators but the whole team and community to employ non bias interpretations; suddenly opening museums and heritage sites as safe spaces for discussions to have about your past, present and future aspirations in our society today.
Would they have known the impact of their actions and its legacies?
Is it our responsibility to learn all the facts about our rich history?
Has the taught us not to to repeat the same mistake
Read the final Report and Findings of Gloucester City Commission to Review Race Relations.