Sacredskulls Co / Heritage
I’ve been watching the surge of virtual exhibitions from grassroots collectives for several years now, and each project seems to ask the same, quietly provocative question: can a loosely organised...
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I remember the first time I stood in front of an object whose label told me almost nothing. A carved figure, beautiful and worn, with one sentence: “Unknown origin. circa 19th century.” I felt...
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Handling sacred objects from other cultures is not an abstract curatorial puzzle — it’s a set of human relationships, obligations and risks that I have learned to take seriously through years of...
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When a single carved mask returns to a village after decades — sometimes centuries — away, the ripple effects are rarely limited to the object itself. I've watched this happen in places where...
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I still remember the first time I stood alone in a reading room, a stack of colonial-era glass plate negatives before me. The images were beautiful, infuriating, and utterly opaque in different...
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I have spent years watching cities argue with themselves over paint. A wall that one group calls an act of vandalism can be, to another, a living archive of community feeling, a landmark of identity,...
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When I first began researching collections for museums and independent projects, one encounter changed how I think about authority in museums. I sat in a cramped community centre with a woman who had...
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When museums claim to “save” objects from neglect, they too often inherit stories of dispossession. I’ve listened to elders in Caribbean parishes, artists in Lagos and curators in provincial...
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I inherited my first West African textile the way many people inherit objects: a box that had been in the attic, a faded wrapper folded around a family story. For years it was simply beautiful linen...
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I remember the first time I saw a polished prototype from a cultural-tech startup — an elegant interface that promised to “democratise access” to remote collections. It was irresistible:...
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