Cambridge museum offers reflection room for ‘triggering' slavery exhibit
Cambridge's leading museum has provided a reflection room for visitors 'triggered' by an exhibition about the slave trade.
The university's Fitzwilliam Museum has launched a flagship exhibition titled Rise Up Resistance, Revolution, Abolition, which explores the fight to end transatlantic slavery.
The show's accompanying book has caused an academic row at Cambridge over claims that Prof Stephen Hawking benefited financially from slavery.
In addition to a content warning on entry to the exhibition, curators have provided a room for those who 'may feel overwhelmed or triggered by this subject matter'.
The Fitzwilliam will also host events designed to facilitate dialogue and centre on key themes in the exhibition.
The first of these will cover issues including the 'transmission of cultures by people of the African diaspora in response to empire, colonialism and the slave trade'.
The room in the Fitzwilliam provides pamphlets to guide visitors to 'wellbeing' material and other resources.
These include the websites of mental health charities, including specialists with the Black African and Asian Therapists Network, and curriculum material covering black history. The guide also directs visitors to citizens' advice.
The large room is furnished with tables and soft chairs and filled with books covering issues of race, including volumes by TV historian David Olusoga.
Also available is Richard Dyer's set of essays, White, which looks at the 'representation of whiteness by whites in Western visual culture'.
The Fitzwilliam website states that the exhibition is suitable for children and 'for everyone' because 'all live with the consequences of transatlantic slavery, and we cannot understand today's world or the legacies of structural racism and inequalities without knowledge of it'.
It covers everything from abolition movements to modern-day racist injustices and has an accompanying book-length catalogue.
A central claim in the catalogue is that 'slave trade financial instruments shaped the intellectual life of the university by supporting the country's most renowned mathematicians and scientists'.
This states that men including Hawking, Charles Darwin's scientist son George, and physicist Arthur Eddington benefited financially from the slave trade.
It says that their professorships were paid for through an initial request in 1768 of £3,500 from a mathematician and university vice-chancellor named Robert Smith.
This was from stock bound up in 'South Sea Annuities', stock the Fitzwilliam has claimed was linked to investments in the slave trade.
Leading British men of science are therefore linked to what the book exhibition terms 'dark finance'.
However, the research has been disputed by leading historians, including Lord Andrew Roberts, Sir Noel Malcolm, and Cambridge professors David Abulafia, Lawrence Goldman, and Robert Tombs.
Prof Tombs criticised the work of Cambridge to attach historic guilt, saying that 'we are sadly accustomed to seeing our great institutions damaging themselves and the country that supports them'.
'This case is doubly dispiriting as a great university institution shows itself resistant to argument and indifferent to evidence.'
The Rise Up exhibition was launched in February to document the history of black and white abolitionists, particularly those linked to Cambridge.
It offers an overview of life on plantations and the move toward abolition and states that some African merchants participated in the slave trade.
The book created for the exhibition contains a number of academic contributions on the slave trade and opens with a statement that the 'fight for true equality, justice and repair continues'.
The Fitzwilliam said the research was correct and important.
A spokesman said: 'The Rise Up reflection space gives the opportunity for visitors to explore, create, read, learn and reflect after viewing the exhibition.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
Iranian rapper Tataloo once supported a hard-line presidential candidate. Now he faces execution
The tattoos covering Iranian rapper Tataloo's face stand out against the gray prison uniform the 37-year-old now wears as he awaits execution, his own rise and fall tracing the chaos of the last decade of Iranian politics. Tataloo, whose full name is Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, faces a death sentence after being convicted on charges of 'insulting Islamic sanctities.' It's a far cry from when he once supported a hard-line Iranian presidential candidate. Tataloo's music became popular among the Islamic Republic's youth, as it challenged Iran's theocracy at a time when opposition to the country's government was splintered and largely leaderless. The rapper's lyrics became increasingly political after the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and the subsequent wave of nationwide protests. He also appeared in music videos which criticized the authorities. 'When you show your face in a music video, you are saying, 'Hey, I'm here, and I don't care about your restrictions,'' said Ali Hamedani, a former BBC journalist who interviewed the rapper in 2005. 'That was brave.' The Iranian Supreme Court last month upheld his death sentence. 'This ruling has now been confirmed and is ready for execution,' judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir told reporters at a press conference last month. Activists have decried his looming execution and expressed concern for his safety after he reportedly tried to kill himself in prison. Tataloo began his music career in 2003 as part of an underground genre of Iranian music that combines Western styles of rap, rhythm-and-blues and rock with Farsi lyrics. His first album, released in 2011, polarized audiences, though he never played publicly in Iran, where its Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance controls all concerts. Tataloo appeared in a 2015 music video backing Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and Tehran's nuclear program, which long has been targeted by the West over fears it could allow the Islamic Republic to develop an atomic bomb. While he never discussed the motivation behind this, it appeared that the rapper had hoped to win favor with the theocracy or perhaps have a travel ban against him lifted. In the video for 'Energy Hasteei,' or 'Nuclear Energy,' Tataloo sings a power ballad in front of rifle-wielding guardsmen and later aboard the Iranian frigate Damavand in the Caspian Sea. The ship later sank during a storm in 2018. 'This is our absolute right: To have an armed Persian Gulf,' Tataloo sang. Tataloo even issued an endorsement for hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi in 2017. That year, the two sat for a televised appearance as part of Raisi's failed presidential campaign against the relative moderate Hassan Rouhani. Raisi later won the presidency in 2021, but was killed in a helicopter crash in 2024. Fame in Turkey, prison back in Iran In 2018, Tataloo — who faced legal problems in Iran — was allowed to leave the country for Turkey, where many Persian singers and performers stage lucrative concerts. Tataloo hosted live video sessions as he rose to fame on social media, where he became well-known for his tattoos covering his face and body. Among them are an Iranian flag and an image of his mother next to a key and heart. Instagram deactivated his account in 2020 after he called for underage girls to join his 'team' for sex. He also acknowledged taking drugs. 'Despite being a controversial rapper, Tataloo has quite the fanbase in Iran, known as 'Tatalities,'' said Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy. 'Over the years, they've flooded social media with messages of solidarity for him and even campaigned for the rapper's release in the past when he was detained on separate charges.' Tataloo's rebellious music struck a chord with disenfranchised young people in Iran as they struggled to find work, get married and start their adult lives. He also increasingly challenged Iran's theocracy in his lyrics, particularly after the death of Amini following her arrest over allegedly not wearing the hijab to the liking of authorities. His collaboration 'Enghelab Solh' — 'Peace Revolution' in Farsi — called out Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by name. 'We don't want tear gas, because there are tears in everyone's eyes,' he rapped. But the music stopped for Tataloo in late 2023. He was deported from Turkey after his passport had expired, and was immediately taken into custody upon arrival to Iran. Death sentence draws protests Tehran's Criminal Court initially handed Tataloo a five-year sentence for blasphemy. Iran's Supreme Court threw out the decision and sent his case to another court, which sentenced him to death in January. The rapper already faced ten years in prison for a string of separate convictions, including promoting prostitution and moral corruption. 'Tataloo is at serious risk of execution,' Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of advocacy group Iran Human Rights, said in a statement. 'The international community, artists and the public must act to stop his execution.' Tataloo earlier expressed remorse at a trial. 'I have certainly made mistakes, and many of my actions were wrong,' he said, according to the state-owned Jam-e Jam daily newspaper. 'I apologize for the mistakes I made.' Tataloo married while on death row, his uncle said. Last month, Tataloo reportedly attempted to kill himself, but survived. His death sentence comes at a politically fraught moment for Iran as the country is at it's 'most isolated,' said Abbas Milani, an Iran expert at Stanford University. The Islamic Republic is 'desperately trying to see whether it can arrive at a deal with the U.S. on its nuclear program and have the sanctions lifted,' he said. Drawing the ire of Tataloo's fans is 'one headache they don't need,' he added.
The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
You need to see wild movie by Scots director that breaks all the rules
Not so, as it turns out. It's only now, a decade on, that Slow West's follow-up is preparing to make its theatrical bow after a well-received premiere at this year's Glasgow Film Festival where it was the opening film. A blend of samurai flick, chase film, historical epic and heist movie, Tornado follows the titular heroine, a Japanese puppeteer, as she and her father Fujin eke out a living somewhere in northern Britain at the end of the 18th century. Into their lives one day comes a band of brigands led by the ruthless Sugarman and his argumentative son, Little Sugar. The thieves are toting a sack of stolen gold coins, but it's when they are robbed in turn that the trouble begins for Fujin and, in particular, Tornado. A scene from Tornado by John Maclean (Image: free)Maclean's second film began life in 2016, immediately after the success of Slow West. You can't say he didn't hit the ground running. 'Having done a Western in America that to me was a little bit about immigration, I thought I could do the same for Britain – write a film where there's an African bandit, a French performer, a Japanese wanderer,' he tells me over Zoom. 'That was one idea. But then when I started the script, the heart of it started to come from father-daughter relationships. In Slow West, the thing I took from my personal life was a young Scottish boy being in love with somebody who didn't necessarily love him back, and him going to the ends of the earth for her. With Tornado, it was a father trying to teach his daughter his own Japanese culture, and her not being interested.' The process of writing the script continued into 2017 and then into 2018. When the pandemic happened it inevitably had an effect on production, but Maclean says a major issue even before then was one far more familiar to film-makers than zoonotic diseases – cash. 'I was ready to go but we just couldn't find people interested in funding it for a good while. I think it's just tough out there. You need a certain calibre of actor attached to finance films these days, and the actors have to become bigger and bigger to finance lower and lower budget films because – bottom line – people aren't going to the cinema so much.' Luckily, Maclean has never had much difficulty attracting big names to his films or identifying talents on the rise. He even managed it in his BAFTA-winning short Pitch Black Heist, which starred Michael Fassbender. It was released in the same year the Irishman won a slew of awards for his role in Steve McQueen's Hunger and first appeared as Magneto in X Men: First Class. Fassbender then returned to Team Maclean in order to work on Slow West and his co-star on that film was Kodi Smit-McPhee, who would also go on to star in the X-Men films (as Nightcrawler) and garner an Oscar nomination in Jane Campion's 2021 film, The Power Of The Dog. Things are little different this time around. The great Tim Roth plays Sugarman, Jack Lowden is Little Sugar and, for the roles of Fujin and Tornado, Maclean has cast Giri/Haji star Takehiro Hira and 22-year-old Mitsuku Kimura, who goes by the name Kōki. She may be new to acting, but by her late teens she was already a magazine cover star in her homeland, had walked the Paris Fashion Week runways as a model for Chanel, and was enjoying a successful pop career. Read more In fact Maclean had despaired about finding the right actress to play Tornado, even resorting to street castings to try to find non-actors. In the end Kōki was recommended by someone who had worked with her actor father Takuya Kimura, star of Takashi Miike's 2017 samurai action film Blade Of The Immortal. Meanwhile her mother, Shizuka Kudo, is a celebrated singer and 1980s pop star with 11 Japanese number one hits to her name. Maclean laughs as he remembers his first Zoom call with his prospective star. 'After about 10 seconds I was like: 'She's the one'.' So how big is she in Japan? 'Massive,' he says. 'She's known more as a model, but they don't know how great she is at acting – yet. And she came over here to Edinburgh and I think for the first time in her life she was able to walk around without being absolutely mobbed. People camp outside her house in Japan because her parents are so famous, so she's never had freedom. She came over here and absolutely loved it. She could walk around, didn't get hassled. She could perform and act and be creative. She's incredible. I didn't have to say anything to her, there was no direction. She just go it.' Lowden was recruited after an Edinburgh International Film Festival event at Edinburgh Castle – 'He told me he loved Slow West so I went straight back to the script and thought: 'I'm going to tweak this'' – while Maclean impressed Roth with his love of the work of British film-maker Alan Clarke. Best known for directing Scum in 1979, Clarke also made an iconic series of films in the Play For Today strand including folk horror Penda's Fen, Elephant (about the Troubles) and 1982's Made In Britain, which starred Roth as a racist 16-year-old skinhead. 'As soon as we got talking, he could see my love of Alan Clarke and that meant a lot to him.' For Maclean, meanwhile, it was a dream come true: as a student working at the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh he had been wowed by an appearance by Quentin Tarantino in 1994 to promote Pulp Fiction. To work with the star of Reservoir Dogs made him feel he had come 'full circle', as he puts it. Japanese singer and model Kōki as Tornado in John Maclean's new film of the same name (Image: free) A shared influence for Maclean and Tarantino, both scholars of Japanese cinema, is Lady Snowblood, the 1973 film starring Meiko Kaji as a kickass assassin bent on revenge. It directly inspired the American's Kill Bill films and in Maclean's film it's a touchstone for Tornado's transformation from bored Gen Z-er into samurai sword-toting avenging angel. For the Scot, it's only one of a great many influences, however. 'When I'm writing a script I consume such a huge variety of films,' he admits. 'The most recent ones which were an influence were films coming out of Iran and Turkey. I'll always love action films, so my cinematic bedrock would Predator and Die Hard and Robocop, those sorts of films. But equally I love Tarkovsky, Bergman and Bresson ... This one was influenced by everything from touches of David Lynch's Blue Velvet all the way through to Steel Magnolias even. I watched that for some reason.' A 1989 comedy drama set in Louisiana and starring Dolly Parton and a young Julia Roberts is hard to place in Tornado's DNA. But, though the ingredients may be many and varied, it's the eventual dish which is the thing that matters – and this one has been worth the wait. Tornado is released on June 13. Since this interview was conducted The Beta Band have reformed for a tour of the UK starting at Glasgow Barrowland on September 25.
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
Hours left to get 30% off Boden dresses that are perfect for summer
Refreshing our summer wardrobes is made easy with the latest savings on dresses at Boden Shoppers hoping to refresh their summer wardrobe have a limited time to make the most of Boden 's latest offer. Right now, fashion fans can save 30% off all full-price dresses. The deal is available until 11:59pm on June 8, so there's not long left to bag some huge savings. Simply enter the code: 30WD at the checkout to redeem the discount. This sale is one of Boden's most popular seasonal promotions, and it covers everything from breezy linen frocks to floral shirt dresses and chic occasionwear. It's also ideal timing, with holidays, weddings, and warmer days well underway. The discount code is only for full-priced items, so it excludes sale and clearance products as well as other discounted clothing. Alternatively, shoppers who don't mind splurging can pick up the Adeline Black Tiered Strappy Dress from FatFace, which comes in at £99. With thin straps, a shirred panel top and sweetheart neckline, this frock delivers a flattering tiered silhouette. Its lightweight material ensures comfort during the warmer months. For fashion fans on a budget, we love this White Tie V-Neck Pintuck Midi Dress from New Look. Priced at £32.99, the elegant frock provides a breezy, effortless ensemble with waist-cinching ties at the back. Among the most talked-about pieces in Boden's current collection is the Sofia Trim Jersey Midi Dress, which retails for £68.60 after the discount. Described by shoppers as 'very flattering,' the lightweight dress is a great option for all occasions. Another popular pick is the Violet Cotton Midi Dress, one of the latest new arrivals. It usually retails for £120 but is available for £95.20 with the discount. It features long sleeves and a flowing skirt for an easy, breezy look. Lastly, for those seeking a clean and sophisticated look, we love the Ada Linen Short Dress. It's available in three tones: white, blue, and green and it retails for £84 after the 30% discount. One happy shopper wrote in a five-star rating: "The blue is exactly as in the photo on the website and utterly beautiful. The skirt flares out just a bit. I find it the perfect summer dress and can't wait to wear it." Another person shared: "A darling white linen dress! I purchased this for my daughter, it's classy and special." However, one shopper noted that the colour of one dress wasn't as expected. They said: "I just ordered this dress, and the style is very flattering, it's well cut and very versatile. It's perfect in every sense, except the shade of blue." Remember, Boden's 30% off sale ends at midnight on June 8, so you'll have to act fast to save on popular styles.
