Exhibition review: Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance

A content warning states at several points throughout the exhibition: ‘This exhibition explores themes of enslavement and racism. It includes depictions of slavery and objects linked to violence and exploitation’. This review does as well.

The Fitzwilliam Museum has skillfully delivered its most important exhibition to date: Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance (hereafter Black Atlantic). It is a triumph of curatorial collaboration and expert research, carefully crafted into a narrative that disrupts our historical understanding of Richard Fitzwilliam, the founding of the Museum, and our perceptions of European visual culture in the complicity of perpetuating and justifying the transatlantic enslavement of African peoples.