Unsettling the Archive

Abstract

This article contributes to debates around African cultural heritage preserved in European archives and museum institutions. It offers a critical analysis of the Danford Collection of West African Art and Artefacts (University of Birmingham) that unsettles the collection to reveal its archival silences. Unsettling the archive reveals the power relations underlying practices of accumulation and exhibition. Yet although exposing silences and elisions, it reveals surprising and overlooked presences, such as a rare painting from 1960 by Nigerian artist Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu. The article focuses on Ugbodaga-Ngu’s life and work so as to enrich and expand our understanding of the Danford Collection and the way in which the heritage it contains is presented and understood. It sheds light on the way institutions, such as University of Birmingham, have historically gathered material originating from or relating to the African continent and its inhabitants, whether of colonial or more recent production, which in turn reveals the need for more inclusive approaches to reading the archive that recognise the multiplicity of voices therein.