8/25/2020
British Museum Removes Founder's Statue Over Slavery Links
Breaking Newstags: slavery, British Museum, Hans Sloane
The British Museum has removed a bust of its founding father, who was a slave owner, and said it wanted to confront its links to colonialism.
Hartwig Fischer, the institution’s director, revealed the likeness of Sir Hans Sloane has been placed in a secure cabinet alongside artefacts explaining his work in the context of the British empire.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Fischer said: “We have pushed him off the pedestal. We must not hide anything. Healing is knowledge.”
The decision had been taken partly as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement, the museum’s curators said. Protests against racial inequality broke out around the world following the death of George Floyd in the US in May.
Sloane – a physician born in Ireland in 1660 – partly funded his collection from enslaved labour on Jamaican sugar plantations. His artefacts provided the starting point for what became the British Museum.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- What Happens When SCOTUS is This Unpopular?
- Eve Babitz's Archive Reveals the Person Behind the Persona
- Making a Uranium Ghost Town
- Choosing History—A Rejoinder to William Baude on The Use of History at SCOTUS
- Alexandria, VA Freedom House Museum Reopens, Making Key Site of Slave Trade a Center for Black History
- Primary Source: Winning World War 1 By Fighting Waste at the Grocery Counter
- The Presidential Records Act Explains How the FBI Knew What to Search For at Mar-a-Lago
- Theocracy Now! The Forgotten Influence of L. Brent Bozell on the Right
- Janice Longone, Chronicler of American Food Traditions
- Revisiting Lady Rochford and Her Alleged Betrayal of Anne Boleyn