Race in the public square: the role of museums in difficult but necessary conversations

For more than a century, museum artefacts have been collected in ways that are unacceptable to today's societies. How can we repair this damage? Will it be repairable? And what role can museums play when we address issues like colonialism and slavery? How do you look at a common story together, from different angles, and still recognize it as ours?

These are some of the questions to be addressed in this conversation with Lonnie G. Bunch, in which the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution will explore the critical need for museums around the world to work in collaborative and creative way to recover and recognize the painful legacies of the slave trade, in order to promote social justice and new visions for the future.

Paula Cardoso, founder of the Afrolink digital community, and Sofia Lovegrove, assistant coordinator of the International Heritage Cooperation program at the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency, moderate this conversation.