‘Rethinking Restitution’ at the Manchester Museum, by Molly Davies

Manchester as a city holds its own colonial past, its construction and industrialisation reliant upon wealth from enslaved labour and the triangular trade. The museum is one of the University of Manchester’s ‘cultural assets’, and thus these narratives both come from and are reflected on the university. The colonial narratives integrated into the city and its institutions are slowly unraveling, but the confrontation of colonial pasts is the first step on a long journey.

Decolonising Manchester Museum, by Isabella Heis

Anyone who has kept up with decolonial action will know that museums are one of the key sectors expected to undertake decolonisation, with Eurocentric narratives and colonised or unethically acquired objects taking centre stage in museums throughout the world. The original indigenous contexts, and sometimes even the consent of the objects’ country of origin, have historically been absent from these displays.