Artist Hew Locke Confronts Colonialism at the British Museum

“What have we here?” is the fruit of two years of Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke’s research at the British Museum in London, the U.K.’s venerable archive of historically important artifacts. Working with the institution’s cooperation, Locke has taken the opportunity to reframe a selection of the U.K.’s most discomfort-making treasures, either from the museum or on loan from other British historical establishments.

Part Locke solo exhibit, part curated museum showcase, “What have we here?” melds warehouse-style, chipboard shelving and standard formal glass vitrines for a darkly lit take on the horrors of colonialism built around a public archive with a reputation for holding on to valuables taken during Britain’s empire-building and enslavement period. The social media joke that’s been going around for a while now rings true here—when a significant or high-ticket object goes missing in the U.K., someone will inevitably post, “Has anyone tried looking for it in the British Museum?” Locke uses a welcome video at the exhibition’s entrance to plug into this awkwardness. He explains the project’s results are intended to start discussions around the inconvenient truths behind the British Museum’s collection strategy—what he calls issues of empire and messy history.

For hundreds of years, the U.K.’s governments, royalty, landed gentry and businesses enabled and profited from colonialism and slavery. All manner of precious objects were stolen from the countries they invaded and controlled along the way and—as the social media gag indicates—some of them are still housed in the British Museum. Take the Benin Bronzes, marketed by the place as one of its key attractions. Now part of Nigeria, Benin City was a mighty empire until the British invaded in 1897. The occupiers massacred Benin citizens, deposed their ruler and seized treasures—including the Bronzes—to send back to the U.K. The Bronzes include wood and ivory pieces as well as metal artworks, and Locke has homed in on the iconic ivory mask of Queen Mother Idia here. His plain plaster casts of the piece emphasize how, although the mask has become a symbol of African culture, it is kept thousands of miles from home despite the Nigerian government continually asking for the return of all Benin Bronzes. He’s also used images of the mask on the sails of Armada Boat 6.  Votive boats were used in European churches to offer prayerful protection for sailors at sea, and Locke’s reproduction vessels underscore the bitter irony of praying for the deliverance of slavers when so many slaves perished at sea and on land.

Locke has taken control of an antique porcelain bust of Queen Victoria in a vitrine opposite, retitling it Souvenir 20 (Queen Victoria) and adorning the head with a stunning headdress he’s made from false exotic regalia—plastic snakes, sequins and fake foliage. Throughout the exhibit, the museum’s explanatory text cards (name of object, country of origin, year, etc.) sit beside cards bearing Locke’s thoughts and quotes. His card beside the bust points out that, as head of the British Empire, the atrocities documented in the exhibition took place under Queen Victoria’s watch. “She’s not innocent,” he writes.

There are also share certificates on display. The certificates were issued by 18th- and 19th-century colonizing governments to raise money for their war chests. Locke has used acrylics to paint over the papers, his ghostly figures representing how he sees the certificates as instruments of control and representations of financial and colonial power.

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Other museum artifacts are presented untouched and unaltered as Locke allows their gruesome stories to speak for themselves. There’s a silver-gilt dish set with the gold pendant British armed forces took from Asantehene Kofi Karikari, king of the Ashanti Empire (now Ghana), as an indemnity payment imposed by the UK government at the end of the 1874 Anglo-Asante War. Locke’s text notes how objects can go “from being venerated to a heap of this, a heap of that, broken up between soldiers and officers. Raw loot.”

The Brooks Jug is pro-slavery propaganda, a piece of tableware given to the captain of an 18th-century slave ship to wish him success in his awful trade. The Barbados Penny is a coin from the same century, struck for use by British plantation holders in Barbados. The head depicts an African man, undoubtedly a slave. Look closely, and you’ll see two words stamped beneath his profile: I SERVE.

What Locke calls The Watchers oversee the whole set of displays. These tacit, three-quarter-life-size figures made by the artist stand on top of cabinets and cases, looking down on the exhibition. Locke says they are his Greek chorus, and they certainly provide an uneasy presence. Their implacable gazes illuminate the exhibition’s undercurrent of a shame that should be deeply felt.

“What have we here?” fulfills Locke’s intention of starting discussions with depressing success. What might be its most magical trick, though, is what should happen after visitors leave the exhibition to wander around the rest of the British Museum. Why, they might now ask, is there a moai (Easter Island statue) in one of the rooms downstairs? And the Parthenon Sculptures (nicknamed the Elgin Marbles after Lord Elgin took them from Greece in the 1800s)—how did they end up in another? Arguments to return the moai have been ongoing since 2018. Last year, the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated calls to return the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece. Then there’s the Rosetta Stone, objects looted from Sudan’s Omdurman battlefield in 1898. And so on. Yet here they all are, still in the British Museum, amongst so many more cultural treasures taken mercilessly from other lands.

“Hew Locke: what have we here?” is at the British Museum in London through February 9, 2025. Entrance is £16, and prior booking is advised.