Stories about the legacy of slavery and colonialism must be central to the way museums and heritage organisations present their collections as part of “a new chapter of what heritage is about”, the incoming head of English Heritage has said.
Nick Merriman said a focus on the country’s often highly problematic colonial role “[has] to be part of the mainstream narrative about British history”, and should not be confined only to historic properties, statues or artefacts that had a direct link to slavery or imperial wealth.
“We must expand our mainstream public historical narratives to include the complex, nuanced and difficult stories of slavery and empire,” he said. “This isn’t political correctness, wokery, or changing history … This is simply good history and expanding the range of narratives to introduce more complexity is better history.”
Merriman, the chief executive of the Horniman Museum in south London, is due to take up his post at Britain’s highest-profile heritage organisation in the new year. English Heritage, a charitable trust, looks after the national heritage collection of more than 400 historic monuments on behalf of the state, including Tintagel Castle, Osborne, parts of Hadrian’s wall and Stonehenge.
Discussions about decolonising museum collections have been active in the heritage sector for some time, but in the light of recent controversies over the National Trust’s research into its properties’ links to slavery, Merriman’s comments will be seen as a clear statement of intent.
Speaking at the annual lecture of the Institute of Conservation, he said he would like to see all heritage organisations “offer wider narratives in the biography of an object, including those of the colonial imperial networks which directly or indirectly led to them coming into the collection”. Beautiful artefacts such as tea caddies and snuff boxes owned by wealthy people in the past “have long been valued and collected and admired, but often uncritically and without consideration of the violence it took to make them”, he said.
Under Merriman’s stewardship, the Horniman formally returned its collection of 72 Benin City artefacts, looted by British forces in 1897, to Nigerian ownership. Such returns of artefacts, he said, “will now be an inevitable although small part of the heritage practice that acknowledges the history of slavery and colonialism which is at the background of so many UK collections”.
He added: “Restitution is not to be feared. It won’t open the floodgates or empty collections. It’s only likely to be the most egregious examples of looting or inappropriate acquisition that are returned.”
When it came to “history that is painful” such as statues of controversial people, Merriman said he was “very much in favour of retaining contested heritage and placing it in a much wider context”.
