Challenging White Thinking – More than a Temporary Project?

In 2024 Glasgow Life Museums took part in White Thinking, a project that sought to address barriers to anti-racism work in the heritage sector, led by the University of Strathclyde and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project asked, ‘What is the next step in transitioning small-scale diversity projects with Scottish heritage organisations to more sustainable, and structural, forms of organisational and cultural change?’ The title was taken from Lilian Thuram’s book White Thinking: Behind the Mask of Racial Identity (Hero Press, 2021), which was a key inspiration for the project. The book asks, ‘What does it mean to be white? Beyond just a skin colour, is it also a way of thinking? If so, how did it come about, and why?’

The project had five work strands, each consisting of a heritage organisation – museums and colleges of various types and sizes – paired with an organisation or individuals to undertake a piece of work around histories of slavery, empire and colonialisation within their institution, within the wider remit of anti-racism work.

For one strand of the project, Glasgow Life Museums collaborated with Lilian Thuram, one of France’s leading anti-racist activists – founder of the Lilian Thuram Foundation for Education Against Racism – and one of France’s most-capped footballers. Thuram has extensive experience of working with museums in France to devise exhibitions that foster anti-racist thinking on colonial-era collections. Our aim was to further build on embedding anti-racist strategies within our curatorial practice, using the Glasgow – City of Empire display at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum as a platform for engagement and reflection.

As the start of the overall project approached, it was decided in discussion with the Thuram Foundation that we should begin – in March 2024 – with a school visit to Kelvingrove, in order to explore the types of educational resources that might be used to encourage schoolchildren to engage further with the topics raised by the display. The Thuram Foundation has long experience of working with schoolchildren and young adults and are advocates for the creation of resources that will speak to younger generations.

On his first visit to the museum to view the Glasgow – City of Empire display, Thuram picked up on key issues that he would like to explore with pupils on the planned school visit. He decided to focus in particular on the importance of the words we use to speak about slavery and empire, and what this choice of words reveals about how we position ourselves in relation to history. These ideas were explored the next day in a workshop with a visiting group of approximately 20 secondary-school pupils aged between 13 and 17, from years S2 to S6. Thuram’s use in the workshop of his Foundation’s ‘upside down’ map of the world, which both places Africa at the centre of the globe and shows it in its true proportions, proved particularly successful in encouraging pupils to question their perceptions of history. 

In follow-up meetings between key staff from the University of Strathclyde and Glasgow Life Museums, it was agreed that the most productive next step would be for Thuram to deliver a similar workshop for museum staff – curators and educational staff from Glasgow Life Museums and a range of other Scottish museums. The staff workshop in June 2024 began with a tour of the Glasgow −City of Empire display, following some of the ideas developed in the student tour several months earlier. Feedback from participants indicated that the workshop provided a rare space to discuss race and anti-racism within the work environment, revitalising staff enthusiasm and commitment to decolonising collections. We are not suggesting that a single workshop managed to convince all those present of the need to commit to a decolonial agenda, but it served as a reminder of some of the anti-racism work Glasgow Life Museums has undertaken in the past few years and of the progress made in this area.

In October 2024 the University of Strathclyde hosted a public event as part of Black History Month Scotland to showcase the work that had been carried out across all strands of the project, with a particular focus on the Thuram Foundation’s collaboration with Glasgow Life Museums. In a dialogue with the authors of this blog article (Nelson Cummins of Glasgow Life Museums and David Murphy of the University of Strathclyde), Lilian Thuram talked the audience through different ways in which he had engaged with the Glasgow − City of Empire display, encouraging visitors and staff to think again about their perceptions of history and to ask probing questions about how we choose to represent that past. For example, Glasgow − City of Empire reinterprets John Lavery’s painting State Visit of her Majesty, Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888, which celebrates an event that was crucial to the present-day Kelvingrove, as it was built from the proceeds of the 1888 exhibition. To a visitor, the painting might well initially appear to be one of those formal, slightly stuffy images from another time, depicting regal authority, men in uniform and women in eveningwear. However, the Glasgow − City of Empire display includes a short film beside the painting, which allows visitors to discover more about a selection of important figures depicted by Lavery and their role − military or financial or both − within the hierarchies of Empire. (See other blog posts, including John Muir of Deanston by Nelson Cummins, for more on this topic).

For Thuram, the most instructive starting point for any visit to the display would be the Lavery painting, for, in his view, it laid bare the economic forces that underpinned Empire. Thuram argues that beyond the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ actions of individuals, slavery and empire were driven by the desire for power and profit. ‘White thinking’ is the framework through which the exploitation of the Global South was made to seem ‘natural’, an expression of innate white superiority, and museums have been central to perpetuating belief in these ‘natural hierarchies’. It is this white thinking that renders what might be considered obvious examples of racialised hierarchies invisible within the space of the museum. In Thuram’s vision, learning to see these perceived hierarchies for what they are is the first step in moving beyond them.

The event was attended by a wide range of people, from school groups to heritage-sector professionals and interested members of the public, even including an entire refugee football team from East Kilbride. This was a far more diverse audience than is usually attracted to events at the university (81% of those who replied to a questionnaire indicated that they had not previously attended an event on campus). 

The collaboration with the Thuram Foundation and wider White Thinking project has and continues to have a significant impact on shaping Glasgow Life Museums’ approach to anti-racism as an organisation. Including, but not limited to, how we approach language around slavery and empire, how we engage with anti-racism through school workshops related to Glasgow − City of Empire and how to ensure anti-racism work isn’t seen as solely project focused and is further embedded into our wider programming and work as an organisation.

Further Reading
https://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/football/24695936.lilian-thuram-world-cup-glory-glasgows-anti-racism-advocate