Curating Discomfort

The culture, heritage and museum sector are beginning to understand that much of their collections reveal uncomfortable histories and that the representation of Scotland’s imperial and colonial past need addressed to change the historical bias that excludes the experience of the people who are most affected by this bias today.

To enable us to address this the curating discomfort project has been working internally and externally with stakeholders to disrupt current institutional and curatorial practice, the objective of the project is to facilitate the agency of new and otherwise un-heard voices on the activation and interpretation of the collections.

Most importantly, to lay the foundation for institutions and its people to gain an understanding of their discomfort and the motivation behind opening ‘institutional’ and ‘curatorial’ discourse around collections, sharing museum authority with community stakeholders from a range of backgrounds but in particular, to ensure that stakeholders who historically are most under-represented are actively included with equity in the interpretation of collections.

This will be an online event hosted by the Society.

Lecture will be presented by Zandra Yeaman

Zandra is the Curator of Discomfort based at the Hunterian Museum, Curating Discomfort is looking at ways outside of traditional museum authority to explore the interpretation of contested collections and to design and deliver a series of museum interventions that takes the museum out of the institutional comfort zone.

As an anti-racist activist, Zandra works with institutions to gain an understanding of current social systems and how they are influenced by the legacy of slavery and colonialism. Support them to change a historical narrative that does not centre or privilege colonisers but re-frames the stories to acknowledge and be representative of our shared histories.