A Change of Focus - The history of the slave trade as told in two different museums

Over the last month or so I’ve been fortunate enough to delve into an area of history that I haven’t looked at for quite a while. Once you find your area, the thing that makes you tick, that subject becomes all-consuming, taking all your energy and attention and for me that was the Victorian period and animal studies. But a friend of mine is doing a lot of research into the Slave Trade and I’ve recently joined her on a couple of museum visits, to view exhibitions focused on the topic.

Now the history of slavery and the abolition movement is something I have studied in the past. My first introduction to it being in Year 9, when I first engaged with the transatlantic slave trade and the ‘triangular trade’ and first heard of Olaudah Equiano. But it was some years before I returned to the subject again, when I opted in the second year of undergrad to take the History of the British Empire 1763-1900 module and would later write my essay on the importance of slave narratives to the abolition movement.

Museum of London Docklands
Authors own photo.

However, it’s been a refreshing change to return to the subject and divert my focus from the work I’ve been doing. To be able to engage with a different area of history and to view exhibitions as purely a visitor and not necessarily as a critic has been a rather nice position to be in. But I wouldn’t be me, if I didn’t have a few thoughts to share on what I’ve seen. There are two examples I’d like to discuss. The first being Museum of London Docklands Gallery, London, Sugar and Slavery , and the second, the M-Shed’s exhibition on Bristol’s involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Bristol People Gallery.

The first observation I have is how influential it can be visiting these sorts of places with someone who is so interested in and passionate about the subject that an exhibition or museum focuses on because when they engage, you naturally do as well. I’m really of the opinion that museums and galleries should be places of exchange and dialogue, not silent halls that epitomise that traditional, oppressive museum atmosphere. And when you visit with someone who is actively engaging with what they are looking at or reading, that’s exactly what you get and that is in so many ways more beneficial to your overall learning experience.

Often that other person will be able to tell you something that’s missing, or a different view point that they’ve read and you begin to see more of the bigger picture, than can be conveyed in that particular space or with the funds available. And I didn’t just notice this on these particular visits, but also when viewing a Monet exhibition with my friend who’s a Monet enthusiast and at the Freud Museum in Vienna, where my friend worked on a project to produce a walking tour. I can still tell you now things I learnt from those three individuals having visited places with them and engaged with their particular specific interests. I don’t proclaim to know anywhere near as much as they do, but I now know more because I was inspired by their enthusiasm to learn about those topics.

Plaque in the dock area
Authors own photo.

So what of the exhibitions we went to view. Well let’s start with London, Sugar and Slavery exhibition. If you’ve read my blog recently you’ll have seen how unimpressed I was with the Museum of London Docklands overall and many of those criticisms also, sadly, extend to this exhibit. At a theoretical level it’s fantastic and I base that assessment on what I understand of its aims – to readdress the narrative focus away from the efforts of the parliamentarians and to prioritise the experience of those enslaved; particularly dissenters and black abolitionists. But to be honest, you could have fooled me, the section on resistance being all too easy to overlook in favour the table where the bill was drafted. If it hadn’t been for my friend telling the aim of the exhibition and having done a little reading online, I’d have missed that completely if I’m honest. I felt it was badly executed, either that or its dated very badly since its unveiling in 2007.

Unfortunately it has adopted the “book on the wall” approach. There is loads of information, but I’d question its layout and also some glaring oversights. For example, in some cases there weren’t captions to pictures so you had no idea where they came from, who created them or who they featured. While in others instances where there were captions of who pictures depicted, there was limited information beyond a name so their relevance could easily be missed by an ‘unknowing’ visitor – thankfully I had an expert to assist!  I noticed this in particular about Mary Prince, a picture featured early on in the exhibition but her ‘role’ if you like, wasn’t explained until much later.

Captions at M-Shed
Authors own Photo

That said, there were some really interesting nuggets of information, but they were all too often buried in huge wads of text – personally I would have picked them out and centred them in some areas of blank space, of which there were quite a few. Drawing on my later example as comparison, Bristol did this particularly well, having quotes running round the top of the exhibition space and across the front of the display cases.

I would commend the use good use of oral testimony by the Museum of London, in the contemporary section of the exhibition and this added a level of engagement that otherwise was quite underwhelming. But again, I also felt there was a missed opportunity to show the modern link to human trafficking in the 21^st century, especially in terms of connecting with a younger audience. So often youngsters question why the past is relevant and I think this exhibition could have provided a strong example of why it is and why it’s important to possess knowledge of history. As I said of the whole museum, it just felt very flat and lacking in anything that might provoke more than superficial engagement.

Bristol and the transatlantic slave trade diagram
Authors Own Photo

But I think that’s enough of my whinging about that particular museum. To Bristol. It’s notable in that it’s both a smaller museum and exhibition but as soon as I walked in I was immediately more impressed. The huge diagram of the triangular trade that greets you as you walk into the gallery was both eye-catching and informative. It wasn’t just simple black lines between London, West Africa and the Caribbean, but it featured pictures, statistics, item lists and captions which demonstrated the nature of what was being traded, who funded it and enormity of it. It was off to a good start. It actually told more of what you perhaps didn’t necessarily want to know, the unpalatable truth about the subject. It dealt with that head on and I responded really well to that.

M Shed Exhibition
Authors own photo

In essence it is all shown in a small room, but it used all the tools I wanted to have seen in London.  It made good use of technology (most of which was actually working) and which allowed you to engage with the material beyond what was on display. The interactive screens also offered sound bites, which although limited, catered to a more multi-sensory experience. The only drawback was that you couldn’t take a seat and peruse through the material more comfortably.

Contemporary Link
Authors own photo

The cabinets of objects on display were also not static. They were fuller for starters, but also had clear object lists and as I previously said, quotes were placed on the glass which immediately drew your attention. There was also a map of the area showing buildings that were constructed from the profits made from the trade and the modern thread was also clearly present. In the centre of the room there was a large table with contemporary newspaper articles focusing on the legacy of the slave trade and also to one side, an interactive screen which invites visitors to vote about whether Bristol should commemorate the Slave Trade in some way. The effort to make it relevant and contemporary was much obvious here and also more successful. You were being invited for your opinion and it successfully engaged me.

The only slight odd thing about it was that slightly apart from the main exhibit you had continued display on the slave trade but it was tied into a thematic display on activism in Bristol, so the information on resistance and role of women in abolition movement was a little more difficult to find. It was effective having it encompassed in that thematic display but did feel a little separate from the main exhibition. 

I have to admit it was also helpful to have a guide who knew so much more than the exhibition divulged because it was quite limited. But I didn’t tire of this exhibit like I had done in London, despite its smaller size. I was quite happy reading the information and navigating my own way around, because there was so much to engage with in so many different ways.

We couldn’t really have picked two more contrasting places. I was disappointed by one, while the other exceeded all expectations. It just goes to show that actually the scale of a museum doesn’t necessarily guarantee quality of visitor experience, for in this case I would say the M-Shed outshone the Museum of London and that is something I didn’t expected I’d be saying.