Workshop // 4A 

// Session 4A //
Museums, material culture and imperial legacies of crime

This workshop will explore how we can use object-led storytelling in museums and heritage sites to examine colonial history. Focusing on interpretation work and the practical application of research, we’ll discuss using material culture to make imperial legacies tangible, and the opportunities and limits of this work. Please bring examples of museum interpretation that you think is particularly effective or interesting (or bad!), and objects or artworks you’d like to discuss – you don’t have to, but you’ll get more out of the conversation if you do.

About the Convenor

Alice Procter is an art historian, writer, and educator. In 2017, she started the Uncomfortable Art Tours, unauthorised guided tours of British museums, exploring how major institutions came into being against a backdrop of imperialism. She is the author of The Whole Picture: the colonial story of the art in our museums and why we need to talk about it (Cassell 2020). Her work concentrates on the intersections of postcolonial art practice, the curation of historical trauma, and narratives of national identity.