Making Sense of Difficult Histories: Artists, Institutions, and Questions of Inclusion

In her keynote for 'Curating Historic Portraits: Transcultural Conversations', The Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar, Anjalie Dalal-Clayton reflected on the possibilities, and limits, of contemporary artist interventions in museums through the case of Keith Piper’s 2024 film installation Viva Voce, commissioned in response to Rex Whistler’s mural The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats (1927) at Tate Britain. Tracing the institution’s long and uneven attempts to account for the mural’s racist imagery, she considers how artist-led, research-driven interventions can open new forms of dialogue and new ways of making sense of contested historical artworks, while also attending to the conditions under which such interpretive labour takes place. Although the inclusion of new voices and perspectives can reshape how histories of colonial violence and subjugation are encountered, they do not undo that violence, or resolve the power structures these artworks reflect and emerge from. Even as museums seek resolution through inclusive interpretive practices, Anjalie proposes a shift in emphasis towards more direct forms of confrontation with difficult histories, and towards recognising exclusion as a persistent condition of the museum itself.