Paper short abstract:

What can we do with an anthropology museum to make the world a better place? We can tell stories that remind us we are always stronger together than apart.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology museums can tell stories that remind us that human beings are strong only because they love and care for each other, protecting one another and surviving together.

At the Horniman Museum we are opening a new anthropology gallery that celebrates human creativity, imagination and adaptability, which will offer a resource for our community to encounter other ways of understanding and being in the world. The new gallery is informed by a humanist anthropology which focusses on the lived experience of the individual, immersed in their cultural and material context. This approach emphasises the defining human qualities of love, compassion and empathy with the hope that recognition of shared human experience evokes compassion for others, and a tolerance for other ways of being.

By showing other ways of being we hope our visitors will question the things that go without saying; the stories that define what is true and real. Rather than consuming stories of violence, hierarchy and fear we can draw on the narratives of other cultures to begin to collaboratively create and control our own world-making.

My hope, in the face of terrifying uncertainty for the future of our society, is that we can describe a world where humans are defined by generosity, compassion and mutual respect, and contribute to the work of building communities that resist fear, loneliness and alienation.