Arcadia England

We kicked off our Talk of the Town series this semester with a thought provoking talk from Arcadia England Alumni, Bethany Johnson who studied abroad with us in Fall 2019.

In more normal times Talk of the Town is typically held in a pub, but this one was moved to a virtual format to accommodate all of our students whether they were in their mandatory two-week quarantine, taking their classes virtually from their home country, or studying at one of our partner universities across the UK. 

Despite the change in the normal venue, Bethany Johnson’s talk was as interesting as ever. She shared her research on the decolonization of US and UK museums and repatriation of objects to their rightful homelands. In an insightful, moving and sometimes emotional talk, Bethany took us through the history of how many famous museums, such as London’s British Museum, just around the corner from our London Center, acquired many of its most well-known exhibits, such as the Rosetta Stone, how the manner in which they are displayed encourages visitors to view the cultures from which they originated as “other”, and how persisting in keeping objects in isolation from their intended environment is itself a way of prolonging the colonialist environment within which many of these institutions first evolved. Bethany gave her perspective on how museums could be more welcoming to people of colour and those from indigenous communities and spoke passionately about why objects should be repatriated, pointing out that 90% of sub-Saharan Africa’s cultural artefacts lie outside of the continent (the British Museum alone holds 73,000 of these!) Her presentation led to an interesting discussion, and we hope to be able to welcome her back to a real (rather than virtual!) Talk of the Town in hopefully the not too distant future. 

If you'd like to watch the full talk of the town it can be found here.