Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses research on African collections in Sussex and Kent Museums, which is being conducted collaboratively with African curators and diaspora interest groups.What is the potential of collections assembled through different sorts of encounter - missionary, military and ethnographic?

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses research-in progress on three specific colonial-era African collections in Sussex and Kent Museums. The collections are the product of diverse colonial encounters - missionary, military and ethnographic - and are held in very different sorts of Museums. The research involves archival and oral historical research, digitization, re-interpretation and curating new displays both in situ and in African museums. We explore the findings of the first stage of research, focussed on the ways in which the collections are currently being used and interpreted. The research contributes to broader debates over 'decolonial' possibilities for African collections in various ways. First, through its methodology of co-production with African curators and African diaspora interest groups. Second, through the focus on small regional museums, inviting discussion of the impact of geographical location (rural, small town) and other constraints (legal, institutional, financial and other) in taking forward particular potentially 'decolonizing' strategies. The collections we focus on are: C19th objects collected from Botswana, donated to Brighton Museum by the LMS missionary Willoughby; artefacts from Sudan, collected during the C19th military campaigns against Mahdist forces in the Sudan, donated to the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham; and a large collection of artefacts from the Namibia/Angola borderlands collected by the Powell-Cotton sisters held in the Powell-Cotton Museum in Birchington-on-Sea.