Seeing Truth in Museums, hosted by Conway Hall brought together artists, curators and Indigenous knowledge holders to offer critical perspectives on visual and material culture historically collected for museums in situations of unequal power, in often violent and/or coercive circumstances, during the British colonial era.
Image: Jane Wildgoose, Processing the Crime Scene, 2021
Centering on a conversation between British artist /art historian Dr Jane Wildgoose and Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Janice Ross, Seeing Truth in Museums explored how artists and Indigenous knowledge holders navigate prevailing power structures in museums (and beyond) to tell truth about colonial legacies in collections, and associated intergenerational trauma, and to advocate for processes of reconnection and reparation.
Building on the conversation started in the Artists Decolonise Museums research project, Seeing Truth in Museums takes the form of a conference, exhibition, talk, and online research interviews with the participating artists talking about their work with museums.
Conference
Saturday 1 February 2025 – Conway Hall Library, London
At the Seeing Truth in Museums half-day conference, British artist and art historian Dr Jane Wildgoose and Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Janice Ross were joined by artists, curators, and Indigenous knowledge holders who shared their experience of navigating power structures in museums, telling truth about colonial legacies in collections, and advocating for processes of reconnection and reparation.
The conference includes contributions from Professor Alexis Boylan, Professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut, Dr Bergit Arends, author of Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene: Activating Archives and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld; the visionary designer, storyteller and tech-producer Chidi Nwaubani, creator of the LOOTY project which digitally reclaims looted objects from western museums to help fund young artists from the African continent, and the Voices of Elders from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who spoke in Janice’s presentation.
Redacting the Library
A new artwork by Janice Ross & Jane Wildgoose in collaboration with Ben Gaskell
The conference took place in the Library at Conway Hall, which houses the most comprehensive humanist research resource in the UK and has long been a haven for radicals, political and social reformers, and freethinkers working within the Anglo-European tradition.
But when Janice saw photographs of the Library, prior to the event, she asked Jane if it would be possible to cover the books, portraits and sculptural busts: in order to provide a decolonised space – which she felt would otherwise be of detriment to her Cultural wellbeing when presenting sensitive information – on which to advocate for return of Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural objects long-held in collections founded on Anglo-European principles.
Following up on Janice’s request, and with the help of Ben Gaskell and Nick Kaplony, Jane devised a backdrop for the conference in which all the books in the Library were “redacted” with black card, and the portraits above the bookshelves shrouded in black crape: at once neutralising their presence, and implicitly raising questions about which histories are told (and by whom), and the decentring of one kind of knowledge in favour of another.
Exhibition
Saturday 25 January – Sunday 2 February 2025. Open daily 11am – 7pm – Conway Hall, London
A couple of years ago, on opposite sides of the world and unbeknown to one another, British artist and art historian Dr Jane Wildgoose and Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Janice Ross began focusing their researches on some artefacts that originated in Tasmania during the nineteenth century, which are now in a collection in the UK. The Seeing Truth in Museums exhibition showcased Ross’s and Wildgoose’s resulting work, “in conversation”: as they revealed a history of stolen children, racial science, and misappropriated artefacts, and reflect on the intergenerational trauma that remains an enduring legacy of the collecting practices of the British colonial era.
Ethical Matters talk
Sunday 26 January 2025 Conway Hall, London
In the Ethical Matters talk, artist and art historian Dr Jane Wildgoose discussed the background to her work on Seeing Truth in Museums: sharing some of the discoveries she has made in museum archives, and reflecting on how these have shaped her understanding of the history of collecting, and her ongoing practice as an artist. She was joined by Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Janice Ross, who shared footage of the Invasion Day rally that took place back home that day: in which, each year, Aboriginal people, their allies and supporters, call on the Australian government to “change the date” – 26th January – from a national holiday celebrating the arrival of the First Fleet, and establishment of European settlement in Australia, in 1788, to a day of mourning for the loss of Aboriginal life and culture that was set in motion that day.
Publishing the Conversation
Jane Wildgoose first learnt about Janice Ross’s work when she was researching for ‘Lovely Objects’ and Natural History Specimens: Jane Franklin’s Civilising Experiment of Pan-Imperial Significance, the second in a series of Wildgoose Memorial Library pamphlets about the history of collecting, published in collaboration with Negative Press.
To accompany Seeing Truth in Museums at Conway Hall, Negative Press brought the two artists’ voices together in print form with the publication of Janice’s essay, These are Our Living Stories, with an afterword by Jane, as WML Pamphlet no. 3.
Research Interviews
Online research interviews with Dr Jane Wildgoose and Janice Ross will explore their work with museum collections; referring to “instigator” objects from the Wildgoose Memorial Library, and reflecting on the artists’ collaboration to produce Seeing Truth in Museums, conversations will explore artists’ strategies for telling truth about complex and contested histories, navigating museum power structures, and advocating for processes of repatriation and reparation.
This project is developed by Jane Wildgoose in association with Artquest and Conway Hall, at the invitation of the University of Connecticut; it is a new iteration of UConn’s Future of Truth / Seeing Truth project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. This activity is supported by Arts Tasmania and The University of Tasmania.
This work has a