The Past is Now

The Past Is Now exhibition ran from 2017 - 2018 at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. BMAG invited myself and Aliyah Hasinah to lead and put together a team of co-curators; Abeera Kamran, Sumaya Kassim, Sara Amanda, & Mariam Khan. The project lead was Sara Wajid, and the main researcher Rachael Minott. The aim of the project was to (re)interpret histories of objects that were already in the museum’s collection, and tell the story of their relationships to the British empire and the West Midlands, with audience interaction at the heart of the exhibition.

Whilst the exhibition received rave reviews and international acclaim, the process in putting it together was a difficult and fraught one. As one of the first of its kind, it changed the conversation in the heritage sector, both in the UK and abroad. Unfortunately, many institutions and organisations have jumped on the ‘decolonial’ bandwagon since, without understanding what it actually means or entails, and conflating it with tokenistic ‘diversity and inclusion’ initiatives. Decolonisation has been colonised and commodified. But the real work continues.

Sumaya’s seminal and viral article, which really publicised the exhibition, The Museum Will Not Be Decolonised, was first published on Media Diversified. I don’t think its available anymore, but you can watch/listen to Sumaya reading it on this short film made by Arwa Aburawa: https://vimeo.com/302162709

I gave a talk at the Musuem Next conference about the exhibition, which you can watch here: https://vimeo.com/277609160

There are lots of reviews and articles online, and if you’d like some consultation work on museums and heritage, do get in touch.