Nick Merriman, the chief executive of the Horniman Museum in south London, is due to take up his post at Britain’s highest-profile heritage organisation in 2024.
Merriman says inclusion of difficult stories of slavery and empire is not wokery, but ‘simply good history’. he would like to see all heritage organisations ‘offer wider narratives in the biography of an object, including those of the colonial imperial networks which directly or indirectly led to them coming into the collection’.
Beautiful artefacts such as tea caddies and snuff boxes owned by wealthy people in the past ‘have long been valued and collected and admired, but often uncritically and without consideration of the violence it took to make them’, he said.
He added: ‘Restitution is not to be feared. It won’t open the floodgates or empty collections. It’s only likely to be the most egregious examples of looting or inappropriate acquisition that are returned.’
