The Spectre of Empire in the British Art Museum

Abstract

This article examines the virtual invisibility of colonial art in British art museums today, despite a wealth of recent scholarship calling for empire to be understood as central to British art history. While history museums tend to take a broadly inclusive view of the subject, fine-art institutions continue to define British art in its narrowest geographic sense, despite Britain’s imperial history. The art of colonial Britain is more likely to be seen in such institutions as the National Maritime Museum, where the grand oil paintings of artists such as John Webber and William Hodges sit comfortably within a narrative about British exploration and empire. The exhibitions and collection displays at Tate, on the other hand, effectively operate as the gate-keepers of an established British art-historical canon, despite the institution’s acquisitions policy, which promises to ‘frame and address changing historical narratives’. Why do colonial subjects continue to remain of minimal interest to British curators and directors today, despite a wealth of vigorous postcolonial scholarship over the last decade arguing that ‘the concept of empire belongs at the centre not the margins of British art’?