Barbados announces new museum of slavery
Just days after cutting ties with the British monarchy, Barbados has announced plans to build a major new heritage site dedicated to the history of the transatlantic slave trade.
The museum is set to house the largest collection of British slave records outside of the United Kingdom, as well as a research cebtrew and a memorial adjacent to a burial ground where the remains of 570 enslaves West African men, woman and children were discovered.
“Barbados is authentically enshrining our history and preserving the past as we reimagine our world and continue to contribute to global humanity. It is a moral imperative but equally an economic necessity,” Barbados’s Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said in a statement.
Construction of the museum is set to begin on November 30th 2022, on the first anniversary of Barbados becoming a parliamentary republic.
The site will be located outside of the country’s capital city, next to the Newton Enslaved Burial Ground Memorial, a former sugar plantation and the site of the island’s largest and earliest slave burial ground.
Upon its completion, the district will be the first of its kind in the Caribbean, as it will combine research and extensive documentation from the existing Barbados Archives.
The new archive will “enable Barbados to authoritatively map its history in lasting, healing and powerful ways,” Mottley said. “It will unearth the as-yet-untold heritage embedded in centuries-old artifacts, revealing both Barbados’ history and trajectory into the future.”
According to a statement from David Adjaye, the site’s architect, the design for the district “draws upon the technique and philosophy of traditional African tombs, prayer sites and pyramids.”
In order to commemorate the victims of the slave trade, the grounds above the grave will feature 570 individual timber beams, capped with brass plates and angled towards the sun.
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