Paper short abstract:

How can we use the London, Sugar & Slavery gallery as a launch pad to rethink curatorial practice and contemporary collecting? What contemporary objects & experiences can help us understand the multiplicity of Blackness in London? & What does it mean to 'represent' & to 'know' in Museum displays?

Paper long abstract:

In seeking to move away from the invisible, anonymous and often disembodied voices of authority, this paper explores how the lived experiences of Black lives in London can inform our understandings of the (post)colonial condition. Drawing on Curating London, a contemporary collecting programme at the museum, the paper takes a two folds approach to the analysis of London as a site of resistance and reconciliation: firstly, it will discuss the foundations of the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery, opened in 2007 during the Bicentenary of the Abolition of Slavery Act. It will argue that its formation represented a method of radical curation that tried to balance, counter, and decode some of the arguments around slavery, memory and race in London; secondly, the paper addresses how ethical and mutually beneficial strategies of contemporary collecting can offer museums genuine opportunities to deal with the colonial afterlives. That is, how do we create spaces of healing within structures founded on rupture? Through this, this present new to work 'with' and not 'for' communities who have traditionally been silenced and removed from curatorial practices.