ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the concerns raised in the historical protest as the starting point for of Africa, a project developed between 2014 and 2018 as an attempt to redress lingering tensions through concrete and sustained museological intervention. It explains the curatorial practice as self-consciously engaging with the institutional history of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the political nature of exhibitions. The events that unfolded on the steps of the ROM in 1989 have been acknowledged by community leaders and scholars as an important instance of activist protest sparked by a problematic exhibition. Activist groups, artists, and community organizers were up in arms against the systemic racism of the so-called Canadian multicultural society. The curatorial vision was grounded in common reflections developed in workshops with the invited artists, as well as in longer and shorter-term dialogues with scholars and cultural critics.
