Museums, Empire and Difficult Heritage at Kelvingrove

Museums as we know them today were formed as European colonisation expanded across Asia, the Americas, Oceania and Africa. Museums in Britain benefited directly and indirectly from colonialism, whether through donations from people who worked in the colonies, overseas collecting expeditions, or looting as a result of imperial wars and conflict. Museums are far from neutral. In recent years, debates over the repatriation of objects have captured headlines. But this is only one of the many legacies of the connections between museums and empire. What about the language that is used to describe objects and their cultures of origin? How and why did objects enter a museum’s collection and is this explained? Were museums complicit in colonial exploitation? Should they be decolonised? What does this even mean? This tour of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is about thinking through these issues. Taking you through various galleries and exhibits, we’ll consider how the history of this Glasgow landmark intersects with histories of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, and confront the legacies of this past by imagining new possible futures for the museum and others like it.