The International Slavery Museum, National Museums LiverpoolReview by: RACHAEL GOREJournal of Museum Ethnography, No. 22, Museum Ethnography at Home (December 2009), pp.170-176Published by: Museum Ethnographers GroupStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41417146 .

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Gallery Reviews

that could 'offer a "work in progress" feel, where questions and gaps would be highlighted, and where failed experiments would be displayed alongside those judged a success' so as to 'foster interaction across disciplines, between the wider museum and heritage sector and the general public'. This could include critiquing collecting practices and ideas of scientific progress, and involve staff from academic departments in curating exhibitions to highlight current debates and uncertainties as well as improving factual accuracy.

University museums could be forums for public engagement with academic thinking, criticizing their own practices and providing access to the latest academic thinking, rather than merely being attractive venues for conference receptions or celebrations of their own history. With an entirely new building for the Hunterian now being discussed, the University of Glasgow could be ideally placed to take the lead if it took this approach, linking the public interest in museums for which Glasgow is renowned, with the University's excellence in research and exceptional collections. Then it will be true for its publicity to say: 'Hunter's collection was assembled to improve knowledge of the world and was rich in rare and important objects. Some 200 years later, things are not so different.'

NEIL CURTIS Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen

The International Slavery Museum, National Museums Liverpool, from 23 August 2007.

For further information, visit the International Slavery Museum's website at <http:// www.liverpoolmuseums. org.uk/ism/>.

In a recent newspaper interview, the celebrated Black British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah is quoted as saying that Britain is 'so much clearer, brighter and more honest than it has ever been when it comes to notions of race' (see 'Heart of Blackness', by Brian Logan, in Times2 , a supplement to The Times , no. 69,154 (29 October 2007), pp. 12-13). And, interestingly, Kwei-Armah cites the UK's effort to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade as a critical factor in achieving this positive climate. He mused, 'To have discussed the issues surrounding that, and to be encouraged by the state to do so, has moved us closer to a healing than anything before.' Unsurprisingly perhaps, Kwei- Armah harnessed his standing as one of Britain's leading black dramatists to become a kind of spokesperson for Britain's African-Caribbean community across several campaigns that sought to mark the bicentenary. As part of an installation at Liverpool's new International Slavery Museum, he detailed the painful journey in which he left behind a sense of 'not belonging anywhere' in pursuit of a 'tricultural' identity that led him to reclaim an ancestral name.

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In the context of the International Slavery Museum, Kwei-Armah's personal narrative sits within one of many exhibits occupying the third of three adjacent gallery spaces that are together dedicated to an exploration of the intrinsically complex and contested history of slavery. His testimony sits underneath an illuminated caption on the wall that reads 'What does it mean to be Black British, African American or of African descent in other parts of the world?' For me, it is this part of the exhibition, with this type of question at stake, that perhaps marks the significance of the International Slavery Museum. I say this, because in many ways, the first two exhibition spaces fail to enact a significant departure from the former Transatlantic Slavery Gallery, commissioned by the Peter Moore's Foundation and housed at Liverpool's Maritime Museum between 1994 and 2005.

On visiting the newly opened museum, this sense of similarity was perhaps the first indication to me of a somewhat hidden subtext, which although sidelined through the artful manipulation of visual and textual conventions, can nevertheless be partially glimpsed through a closer reading. This subtext centres on the highly politicized context in which curators of centrally funded government projects are forced to operate. More specifically, it relates to how the attempts of curators to

grapple with issues of seminal importance for Britain's black community are

continuously plagued by their inability to profit from local insights that can only emerge through the time-consuming process of community consultation.

Early proposals for the former Transatlantic Slavery Gallery emerged from a

two-day seminar at the museum in 1992, to which various scholars with an interest in the Transatlantic Slave Trade were invited to deliver papers relating to the

possible form and content of the intended gallery. These proposals met with much criticism from the black community in Liverpool, leading to 'a difficult public launch' that 'brought out a lot of concerns and some hostility'. Now, given that such criticism emerged in the planning stage for the former gallery, one might assume that facilitating a meaningful dialogue with Liverpool's black community would become a priority in plans for the new museum. And indeed it does

appear that some criticisms relating to the former gallery have been taken on board in plans for the new gallery space. First, this is reflected in the fact that the new museum dedicates its first exhibition space to an exploration of African cultures as they existed prior to European conquest. As Stephen Small has discussed, in discussions with Liverpool's black community during preparations for the former Transatlantic Slavery Gallery, the Merseyside African Council 'wanted to know why the first important gallery about Africans was to be about slavery rather than about the rich and textured history of African civilizations prior to

European conquest' (see 'Contextualizing the Black Presence in British Museums:

Representations, Resources and Response', in Eileen Hooper-Greenhill (ed.), Cultural Diversity : Developing Museum Audiences in Britain (London, 2001), p.51).

So on entering the new museum, visitors are quickly directed by its architecture towards three cabinets dedicated to 'African Sculpted Figures', 'African Masks and

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Gallery Reviews

Masquerades', and 'African Music' respectively. Here, one finds a variety of objects taken from the existing collection of National Museums Liverpool, organized and

interpreted according to a traditional classificatory schema that does little to disguise its Boasian taxonomy. Further on, glass cabinets adorned with African artefacts line the walls, organized according to a familiar narrative that seeks to rationalize the selection of seemingly disparate objects in an attempt to fashion coherent representations of African culture.

In displays about Totters and Blacksmiths' or 'The Asante Economy', we are confronted with several of the enduring and problematic legacies of museum classification and display. This is perhaps why, in her review ('Making Sense of Slavery', in Times2 , a supplement to The Times , no. 69,097 (22 August 2007), pp. 12-13), Rachel Campbell-Johnston criticized the exhibition's 'jumbled cases' with 'only the briefest labels' for failing to redefine the Museum's awkward ethnographic collection. For whilst this first exhibition space rightly initiates a celebration of the sophisticated cultures of the Fulani, Hausa, Ibo, and Akan, it does little to enact an imaginative departure from the (much criticized) essentialist and exoticized representations of Africa that pepper United Kingdom museums. Indeed, the well- developed critique of representational conventions that are, according to Ruth B. Phillips (see her 'Where is Africa? Re- Viewing Art and Artefact in the Age of Globalization', in American Anthropologist, Vol. 104, no. 3 (September 2002), pp. 944-52) 'tied to primitivism and cultural evolutionism', and which therefore 'implicitly deny the modernity of Africa', does not appear to have sufficiently informed the Museum's strategies for representation in this section of the gallery space. And the great civilizations of Egypt and Mali are not returned to their proper place as providing evidence of the neglected history of Africa's prowess, which Senegalese intellectual Cheikh Anta Diop saw as a history that located Africa as 'an equal player in the family of man' (see 'Adventures in the Colored Museum: Afrocentrism, Memory and the Construction of Race', by Gerald Early, in American Anthropologist , Vol. 100, no. 3 (1999), pp. 703-11).

As such, this first exhibition space could have sat comfortably within the then Liverpool Museum some seventy years ago. In fact, it could have been dismantled, transported, and reassembled in a matter or hours, provided it had escaped the Liverpool Blitz of May 1941. It is a relic in itself, and therefore fails to sustain many of the valuable insights that have surfaced through collaborative efforts (in other places) that have sought to redefine ethnographic collections in terms of their links to a history of slavery and colonialism. An arbitrary disjuncture between African pasts (gallery number one) and the African Diaspora (gallery number three) is maintained, largely through exhibitionary strategies, tarred with an evolutionary taxonomy, which leave Victorian myths about race somewhat undisturbed. And, significantly, the opportunity for the museum to reflect upon its role in the legitimization of the perpetual looting of precious objects in former British colonies, which often 'found their way' via the docks into Liverpool's museums, is not taken up.

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The second exhibition space tackles the Transatlantic Slave Trade itself. As it was full to the brim with a diverse range of visual and aural media, I was grateful for the moment of respite I anticipated on being drawn towards a window overlooking Albert Dock. From this window, however, the visitor is offered a view of the bays where the slave ships were repaired. Here, visitors are confronted with a very powerful reminder of how the city that they stand in bears the imprint of a bloody history. And this perhaps marks the success of this second exhibition space. For, through clever combinations of carefully selected objects, the gallery reveals a history of Liverpool that has been sidelined in the historical narratives of its institutions for too long. The drawers that hide inventories of captured slaves perhaps serve as a metaphor for this hidden history.

The interactive plantation is another effective stylistic device. Visitors are invited to listen to the narratives of field slaves, house slaves, a Scottish 'traveler' (what a

generous description), and the Governor of Jamaica's wife. As each testimony unfolds, the part of the plantation where that particular individual would have resided is illuminated, thus exposing the complex mapping of power embedded in the plantation landscape. But despite the wealth of information contained in the room, or perhaps because of it, a chance to reflect on the gravity of the Transatlantic Slave Trade is hard to attain. Its 'Shrine to the Ancestors' goes some way to

achieving this, but it is too small and continually hampered by the relentless noise of neighbouring exhibits that intrudes into a space that is supposed to offer visitors an opportunity to 'reflect on the stories and the lives' that unfold in the course of the museum's narrative overload.

The UK government's Department of Culture, Media and Sport today charges national and local museums with the task of becoming 'agents of social change' that

help to 'generate community identity and pride' and to 'celebrate cultural and ethnic

diversity' (see DCMS's May 2007 'policy guidance' entitled Centres for Social

Change: Museums, Galleries and Archives for All available online at <http:// www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/centers_social_change.pdf>). It is through compliance with this agenda that National Museums Liverpool (and others) have secured grant aid for projects that seek to commemorate the bicentenary. But while

tackling the legacies of slavery, which the museum defines as 'racism and poverty' and 'an unquenchable spirit', the extent to which they address such issues is questionable. Within its narrative of the racism and discrimination that black

diasporic communities continue to face, local stories and experiences fail to emerge properly. There are moments when this history can be partially glimpsed: one

striking example being the story of the Stanley House Nursery, a pioneering self-

help initiative that provided education for black children in Liverpool at a time when other local nurseries refused to admit them. Another is the gallery's photographic documentation of the Brixton Riots, a symbol of collective resistance to the racist

'stop-and-search' policies of London's Metropolitan Police Service. But much of the section dedicated to 'Racism and Discrimination' focuses on racism and resistance elsewhere. Whilst detailed explorations of the Civil Rights Movement and apartheid

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View of an interactive model of a plantation in the International Slavery Museum , Liverpool Courtesy and copyright Redman Design / International Slavery Museum , National Museums Liverpool .

South Africa are of considerable significance to Britain's black community, an attention to local manifestations of racist ideology - and local resistance to them - is unfortunately sidelined. A collection of racist advertisements, once widely circulated in Britain, are carefully concealed in drawers that could easily be missed. What could again be conceptualized as a poignant stylistic device instead becomes a suspicious deviation. One cannot help but think that the finger is being pointed elsewhere. And whilst a wall space dedicated to pioneering individuals of African descent is a welcome component, no space is reserved for the men and women who have secured advances on a less spectacular scale through such networks as Liverpool Black Sisters. For me, the absence of such knowledge alerts us to the limited consultation that took place with Liverpool's black community in preparing for the creation of the museum. Curators can access a rich archive of information on

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View of the Black Achievers Wall in the 'Legacy ' gallery at the

International Slavery Museum, Liverpool. Courtesy and copyright Redman Design / International Slavery Museum, National Museums Liverpool

the Civil Rights Movement and the Ku Klux Klan through widely circulated literature and visual media, but to access a history that documents the contemporary achievements of Black Britons requires a more imaginative approach to research.

In spite of such criticisms, I want finally to echo the sentiments of Kwame Kwei- Armah, with which I began this review. A museum such as this would have been

unimaginable until very recently, and therefore its creation must be seen as

testimony to a new willingness on the part of the UK government to face up (to an

extent) to a tyrannical period of its history and the legacies that Britons face as a direct consequence of this. In effect, the museum has emerged as a site where this

political agenda will be played out. But whilst this could be interpreted as a radical

political departure from any previous governmental stance on the topic of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, there has been no comparably radical shift in the museum

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practices that are harnessed to explore this history. Within the confines of centrally funded projects, museums must effectively market their ideas, focusing on the final product rather than on the processes by which exhibitions are achieved. Consultation with communities comes after the formalization of these ideas, if at all, as no official requirement to do so is written into grant contracts between central government and the museum. Moreover, strict deadlines hamper the possibility of meaningful collaboration yet further and, of course, targets relating to visitor numbers remain the driving force. But as Stephen Small rightly asserts in the article referred to above, 'If museums stop after simply increasing black visibility among exhibits, visitors or employees, then they miss the point' (p. 60). As he goes on to say, 'The issue for most black people is how do we recapture our past? How do we influence the processes by which the past is described, interpreted and explained?... We are no longer prepared to leave it to the hands of non-blacks, to let them dictate what and when and where. We want access to and control of representations and resources. And we want the black organizations which currently play such a role in our lives to also play an integral part in these processes' (p. 62). It would appear that the International Slavery Museum fails to meet his legitimate demands.

RACHAEL GORE University of Manchester

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