ipl-logo

Whydah Gally: An Example Of A Museum

712 Words3 Pages

Whose history does museum represent? How do museums represent history? Museums are important places for history. The displays help us to discover who we are, and how we have come to be who we are. But the displays in museums do not just happen, just like all representations of history, whether in books, songs, oral accounts, or even collections of photographs and documents, they have been created and constructed by someone for a purpose. The purpose may be to inform, to challenge, to persuade, to argue or all of these. ‘Museums are not representations of the Other, but can be read as referential indices of the Self’ (p. 365). Museum is a representation of how one interprets the other. The maker of the display has made choices and exercised …show more content…

Originally a slave ship, the Whydah Galley was captured by pirates and remained a pirate ship until its demise in 1717. After the discovery of the Whydah Gally in 1984, Barry Clifford wanted to open a museum commemorating the Whydah Gally as a pirate ship along with its artefacts in a museum so that people could witness the ship that is considered to be the first documented pirate ship to be found. However, he was soon faced with stark oppositions from the Black communities who felt that their history of being a slave was being downplayed by presenting the ship as a pirate ship. As such, the exhibition of the Whydah Gally became a controversial one. While trying to represent the ship in the museum in Tampa, it would have given credibility to the ship for being a pirate ship which would have ignored the ship’s connection to slavery. How will the museum represent history of the ship when the ship itself is controversial? If the museum was allowed to be created, it would have to represent something. As the title asks ‘Whose history?’ the same way the question of whose history is going to be represented in the museum came up. The ship did not only represent the event of piracy but also the event of slavery. If it displayed the ship as a pirate ship, it would have ignored the ship as a slave ship, but if it displayed the ship as a slave ship, Clifford’s childhood dream to show the pirate ship to the world would remain unfulfilled. Clifford …show more content…

345). The Black communities felt that their history was being ignored. The Whydah Galley was a reminder of not only its existence as a pirate ship but also as a slave ship. The memory attached to slavery through the ship becomes a tool that can be used because it personalizes history in such a way that an individual can feel that they have a connection to the matters discussed. ‘How communities respond to how they see themselves being represented in historical/cultural museums and how these reactions are related to the representations themselves’ is evident through the collective memory that was shared between the Black communities. Memory, as such, is both on display and a response that draws on the individual history of the spectator. However, if the agony of the slavery past by a popular power has scarred Black memories up to the present day, there is no doubt that the making of a museum in such situations after the disruptive moment such a memory was firmly marked in the minds of the community. The history of the Blacks, as such, becomes a mere ‘myth’ while the history of the White becomes a

Show More
Related
980 Words | 4 Pages

He didn’t tell anyone about the museum but someone added an iPhone, heels, and a snow globe there next to the objects he set up. That is the beginning of the Museum of Civilization. Over time, he would spend a lot of time in this museum of his and show people around answering questions that they had about certain artifacts. He loves his museum and would dust his beloved objects. He wants to remember what the world was like and what they had before flu

Read More
1529 Words | 7 Pages

Karen Fields presents a plethora of “stories” or oral recollections of history posited by her grandmother for inclusion in a memoir titled Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir. These “stories” as Grandmother Fields calls them provide us with insights into what life was like for a black person in Charleston, South Carolina during the era of Jim Crow in the South. The act of remembering the past, those memories that individuals hold with them as they travel through life, provides us with an encapsulated view of what living was like to them for a specific period. However, these “stories” are not substantial enough to understand the complexities of history in its entirety on its own. Oral histories and personal recollections vary between

Read More
234 Words | 1 Pages

The African History evolved throughout the 20th century where an increasing number of white historians working in the field ( Holt & Brown, 2000). However, there were numerous areas in which work needed to be done. Therefore white historians entered the field to share the work. One of them published the first extensive study of slavery.

Read More
645 Words | 3 Pages

First, during the years 1936-1938, 2,300 people, who were former slaves in the United States, had been interviewed about their own experience of slavery by the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was able to interview people in over seventeen states to preserve the ex-slaves life for people who did not live in those times of slavery. These sources are responses of the ex-slaves feelings about this “peculiar institution”. These interviews were documented to ensure an accurate history of the ex-slaves experiences before they died of old age or disease.

Read More
205 Words | 1 Pages

It felt like there is still a sense of guilt or embarrassment . Slavery is a difficult topic , for both black and white people. ”“Conversations about slavery in today's society are contentious precisely because understanding

Read More
781 Words | 4 Pages

Fred Wilson is known for his talent to make ordinary things portray exceptional messages. Of his works, Mining the Museum is arguably one of his most provocative. In this exhibition, Wilson brilliantly assessed the representation of African Americans and white Americans in the Maryland Historical Society, one of Maryland’s oldest institutions. Still, due to its subtle though “mean-spirited” nature, aspects of Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum would perplex even Plato’s Socrates in the Republic.

Read More
485 Words | 2 Pages

This chapter addresses the central argument that African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed. For example, the author underlines that approximately 50,000 African captives were taken to the Dutch Caribbean while 1,600,000 were sent to the French Caribbean. In addition, Painter provides excerpts from the memoirs of ex-slaves, Equiano and Ayuba in which they recount their personal experience as slaves. This is important because the author carefully presents the topic of slaves as not just numbers, but as individual people. In contrast, in my high school’s world history class, I can profoundly recall reading an excerpt from a European man in the early colonialism period which described his experience when he first encountered the African people.

Read More
597 Words | 3 Pages

Visiting museums is always fun for many people, especially when you are a little kid. You get to see all kinds of different historical works done by the people from the past and present. I recently haven’t been to any museums since I was little, until I got to visit one for this course. For this Action Research Project Paper, I visited Dallas Freedman’s Memorial located in Dallas, Texas. Dallas Freedman’s Memorial is one of the most beautiful museums and quite depressing at the same time.

Read More
614 Words | 3 Pages

Christina Sharpe’s book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being delves deeply into the long-term effects of slavery on Black lives and communities. Sharpe dives into the concept of ‘the wake,’ making connections between the aftermath of a ship’s departure and the continual pain and brutality suffered by Black people. The book dives into the intricacies of memory, trauma, and memorialization, bringing up the question of how to adequately commemorate chattel slavery and its enduring legacies. Sharpe’s thorough study employs the concept of ‘the wake’ as a symbolic and literal space that encapsulates grieving, memory, and resistance within the Black experience.

Read More
443 Words | 2 Pages

Most importantly having the museum as such make many African-American feels closer or connective for America because of it clear message that this is truly their home. In addition, the museum is a public institution that open to everybody, it stands as an example of welcoming everyone to participate, collaborates, and learn about their history. it is very important to people because of it, of course, invest in history. For example, since its opening on September 24, 2016, the museum has "collected the more than 36,000 artifacts" (5). Not only that the museum is a collective institution but the donors whom to help build the museum come from all different backgrounds: nearly 1 40,000 individuals have become charter members of the museum (5).

Read More
2090 Words | 9 Pages

Throughout my life I’ve had an admiration for the expression of human creativity, through outlets like music, literature, dance, and painting, Personally, I have and continue to express myself through music and dance, two passions of mine that have shaped my personality and identity. However, recently I’ve become increasingly interested in the painting aspect of art. Not my own art but for the appreciation of others, both ancient and modern. So when this assignment came to my attention, I approached it with honest interest and curiosity. The first step was to choose a museum.

Read More
734 Words | 3 Pages

The history of slavery has varied over time by people wanting to talk about it in museums and other’s telling true stories of what has happened back in the day. In the article “ Time Machine (1846): A Slave Action in New Orleans,” talks about how the slaves were judged in able

Read More
514 Words | 3 Pages

Sharing her ancestors story and history can also help Ms. Gaillard and other descendants of the enslaved feel more ownership over their history rather than letting it be told by the descendants of wealthy white slave-owners. Structural forces play a large role in our understanding of enslaved peoples past, especially when it comes to life on plantations. Traditional accounts of slavery have often been told from the perspective of slave-owners and other members of the “unmarked” group, rather from enslaved people themselves. These structural forces force members of the “unmarked” group to feel like their ancestors role in history is being altered from what it truly

Read More
791 Words | 4 Pages

“What don’t I understand?” I wanted to know. “Your heritage,” she said. Alice Walker creates an equally strong daughter and mother in her short story “Everyday Use” to present the idea that heritage, whether it is a generation old or many, many generations old, is to be valued and celebrated and passed on to each and every child. As a sophomore in high school, my history classes have shared the events of things like the fall of Rome, the European Holocaust, America’s Watergate scandal, and the highs and lows of our nation’s presidents; unfortunately, the only part of African-American history I’ve been taught is the American side of slavery, and a quick overview of the ever-important issue of our Civil Rights Movement.

Read More
624 Words | 3 Pages

Monuments, displays, and museums are all examples of how history influences our daily lives. Without realizing it, we assume that the things we read and the physical history we can see is always true. History also has the effect of being “watered down” when given to the public. We can better understand that the credibility of each source from each story will differ with the information given. Having a better knowledge of how history is created by the realities seen by the historians.

Read More

More about Whydah Gally: An Example Of A Museum

Related Topics

Open Document