150. Colonial Art and the Museum

Art historian, writer and educator Alice Procter embarks on everything that a historian in mainstream establishment shuns. She speaks about colonial loot, whiteness, historical trauma, myths of national identity besides excavating the colonial story of art in museums. Her unofficial and unauthorised Uncomfortable Art Tours initiative has been unpacking colonial narrative since 2017 across some of Britain's leading museums.  Her book The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in Our Museums & why We Need to Talk about it deftly unpacks many of the themes that guide her work and asks crucially '…who has the right to hold objects, and to tell their stories? Alice in this conversation with Pramod Kumar KG, art historian and co-founder of Eka Archiving Services deliberates on repatriation and restitution and the need to explore alternative histories of objects, people, and collections.  This episode of BIC Talks was originally a live BIC Streams session in collaboration with Eka Archiving Services.