‘Shot two zebras. Played tennis’: Scarborough museum confronts legacy of colonial past
Discovery of stuffed animals from central Africa and recordings from ‘human zoo’ inspires exhibition 'From Local to Global' at Scarborough Art Gallery.
It was when part of a Scarborough museum was being redeveloped more than a decade ago that builders found a blocked-up door. Behind it they discovered bags filled with asbestos and, under that, a collection of taxidermied animals that had been collected by a Victorian big game hunter and left to the museum. Neglected, outdated and ethically problematic, the temptation may have been to shut the artefacts away again. Instead, the Scarborough Museums and Galleries opted to do something else with the archive bequeathed by Col James Harrison – some of it much more morally challenging than stuffed antelope heads. The result is From Local to Global, an exhibition at Scarborough Art Gallery that engages head on with Harrison’s legacy and examines not only the items he collected but the way the museum and other institutions benefited from colonialism.
