The reinterpretation of the Wilberforce House Museum (WHM) is the first of this year's two major museum openings around the theme of transatlantic slavery. The second will be unveiled this summer in Liverpool.
The original museum in Hull, the birthplace of William Wilberforce, opened in 1906 and displayed the Yorkshire MP and abolitionist's artefacts along with local history and decorative art all mixed in with its slavery collection.
After a £1.6m redevelopment over an 18-month period, the repackaged museum was unveiled this March. Its introductory panel declares: 'This museum explores the history of slavery, abolition and the legacy of slavery today.' Below that is a mention of Wilberforce's connection with the house.
I hadn't seen the museum in its previous guise, but was told by staff that it was popular with the older age groups and less so with the young.
The beautiful 17th-century listed building stands stately-home-like in Hull's old town and is a part of the museum quarter that opened in 2002 and features four of Hull's museums - Streetlife, Hull & East Riding Museum, Arctic Corsair and WHM. The old town and the building are a magnet for anyone with an eye for beautiful things.
The WHM's gardens feature a life-sized statue of Wilberforce himself, and once inside the house, the neutral paintwork and old wooden panelling create a quiet ambience. Most of the displays are stand-alone, so that if they were taken away, the house in its full delight would remain unblemished, much to English Heritage's approval.
Each section of the exhibition is colour coded, corresponding to the free guide; the story is told by following a well-signposted route, which takes in slight turns and stairs (there is a lift) in a house that must have challenged designer and curator. Excellent use of space has been made and you never feel that the bright colours and modern displays clash with their surroundings.
The tour starts with a history of the house explaining those who previously lived there (NatWest Bank pioneers among them) before and after the Wilberforce family. The text is written on wine-coloured card and is fitted into the rectangles of the wood panelling, which works well.
Next comes Wilberforce's story. True to the museum's aim of telling the story of slavery, just two rooms are dedicated to Wilberforce the man, and one of them is used to display for the first time his complete library of 600 books.
After a brief delve into his childhood and family background, we move to Wilberforce's parliamentary life with the 1807 local election - three months after the Abolition Act - for the County of Yorkshire in which he had to fight off a fellow Tory, Henry Lascelles, to retain the seat. There are Wilberforce artefacts such as clothes, tea set, and details of where he worshipped in Clapham.
Apart from a mention of him being anti-trade union and against women's rights, the visitor receives a one-dimensional picture of Wilberforce. Here is a man who, by all accounts, was an eccentric of his time, someone who devoted the best years of his parliamentary life to this one-man campaign to stop the trading of African people in UK waters.
And in doing so, it appears for a second that the museum has fallen into the 'Wilberfest' trap (of which the current Amazing Grace film is a shining example) of a portrait of a saint and saviour.
But what the visitor doesn't know at this point is that the galleries on abolition, much further into the museum, juxtapose the parliamentary abolition campaign with other British campaigners including Olaudah Equiano and Thomas Clarkson as well as organised African resistance in the colonies.
In the abolition section too is the fact that Britain heralded the end of the trade because of fierce economic competition in the colonies from other European powers.
But there is no mention of Wilberforce being a pawn in prime minister William Pitt's political game or Wilberforce's own maltreatment of Africans (invited Africans were screened off at an Abolition Society dinner).
One panel does raise questions over Wilberforce's tactics during the campaign: 'Wilberforce was concerned over raising the abolition issue in Parliament due to the money invested in the slave trade by MPs. Therefore he concentrated first on the abolition of the slave trade, then the abolition of slavery.'
It is true that Wilberforce was fearful of the reaction of the pro-slavery lobby. But it has been widely documented that Wilberforce was never interested in freeing the enslaved and, as historian Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery writes, he said so publicly. But then Wilberforce is Hull's most famous son.
Leaving him aside, we move onto the story of the transatlantic slave trade that takes up most of the upper floor. This section is simply called Slavery, which could be misleading to some - apart from the introductory explanation on the origins of slavery (ancient; existed in most societies; and not based on racial distinctions), it is about the Middle Passage and what came after.
It is split into seven distinct areas: West African Cultures; Capture and Enslavement; the transatlantic Slave Trade; the Middle Passage; Auctions; Plantation Life; and Resistance and Rebellion.
Large and forbidding iron shackles are encased at the centre of this introductory area. Not from the 15th or 18th century, but interestingly from Anglesey during the Iron Age. They are on loan from the National Museum Wales.
Life for West Africans before slavery is shown in the Cultures gallery and offers a broad idea of traditions and practices in different societies, although this gives the skewed impression that all those kidnapped came from West Africa. This section is rich in artefacts, with the majority of items loaned by the British Museum. Hull even has its own Benin bronze with an explanation of how it came to be in Britain.
Staff at the museum made study trips to Bristol and Liverpool, and drew on the expertise of curators and academics such as Hassan Arero of the Horniman Museum, historian Jim Walvin, and David Richardson at the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation.
Jayne Tyler, the Wilberforce Project lead officer, says particular inspiration came from the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (BECM) in Bristol.
And like Bristol's museum, the substance is there. Throughout these upper galleries there is a healthy balance between artefacts, text, quick access to facts, audiovisuals and hands-on materials, contemporary art, maps, diagrams and specially commissioned black-and-white photography of parts of Africa.
The Capture and Enslavement material is aptly set in a passage that gives the immediate feeling of being hemmed in. There are buttons to press to hear testimonies, whispered by actors, but you have to place your ear against the small speakers as it is drowned out by the audiovisual from the next gallery.
The audiovisual in the following gallery show actors dressed as John Newton, a supporter of Wilberforce; a captain of a slave ship; a young shiphand; and Olaudah Equiano and fellow abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano.
Each take turns to tell their compelling stories of almost suffocating from the smell on the ships, witnessing the rape of enslaved women and rebellion on board. It's fixating, and I challenge anyone not to come away moved and disgusted.
The largest room upstairs follows life on the plantations through the eyes of Cugoano, Mary Prince, who wrote a book about her experiences as a slave, and Thomas Thistlewood, who ran a Jamaican plantation. Again there are compelling testimonies. You can sit and watch this audiovisual on one of the few seats in the galleries.
This gallery also covers how the enslaved kept their traditions alive. There is an excellent hands-on wall map that allows visitors to make choices that the enslaved might have had to face such as whether to join a rebellion. Visitors' decisions lead to a particular fate.
After the abolition gallery visitors go back downstairs to two rooms on modern slavery, human rights and the legacies of slavery. All are deftly handled. Lives of those in bondage around the world are told in their own words via touchscreens. We hear of the campaigns of Hull's own citizens through past decades.
There is an important and well-explained centrepiece on racism as a legacy. But a more dubious Lenny Henry character costume to show the contributions made to Britain by living British Africans could have been omitted. (MP David Lammy and others are included to better effect.)
On the downside there is no shop or cafe, which means visitors will be enticed next door to Streetlife where there are both. Getting traffic in the other direction might be an issue.
Before the museum closed, it was getting 35,000 visitors a year. The target of the new museum is 43,750 (a 25 per cent increase). Reports from the museum are that on the Sunday it reopened 300 people came in every 20 minutes.
Phase Two of the Wilberforce House Museum project should start next spring - all being well with a planned lottery application. A pavilion is to house the art and craft collection, temporary gallery space and fair-trade cafe.
All who worked on this museum should be proud of their achievements and, judging by those I spoke to, they are. They consulted widely and have delivered an edifying, accessible and, on the whole, well-balanced experience. This museum is a good starting point before you take on the more detailed BECM in Bristol.
The council's literature refers to it as 'Britain's first slavery museum' - surely a smug nod westwards to the city that unveils its own dedicated transatlantic slavery museum in the summer.
The original museum in Hull, the birthplace of William Wilberforce, opened in 1906 and displayed the Yorkshire MP and abolitionist's artefacts along with local history and decorative art all mixed in with its slavery collection.
After a £1.6m redevelopment over an 18-month period, the repackaged museum was unveiled this March. Its introductory panel declares: 'This museum explores the history of slavery, abolition and the legacy of slavery today.' Below that is a mention of Wilberforce's connection with the house.
I hadn't seen the museum in its previous guise, but was told by staff that it was popular with the older age groups and less so with the young.
The beautiful 17th-century listed building stands stately-home-like in Hull's old town and is a part of the museum quarter that opened in 2002 and features four of Hull's museums - Streetlife, Hull & East Riding Museum, Arctic Corsair and WHM. The old town and the building are a magnet for anyone with an eye for beautiful things.
The WHM's gardens feature a life-sized statue of Wilberforce himself, and once inside the house, the neutral paintwork and old wooden panelling create a quiet ambience. Most of the displays are stand-alone, so that if they were taken away, the house in its full delight would remain unblemished, much to English Heritage's approval.
Each section of the exhibition is colour coded, corresponding to the free guide; the story is told by following a well-signposted route, which takes in slight turns and stairs (there is a lift) in a house that must have challenged designer and curator. Excellent use of space has been made and you never feel that the bright colours and modern displays clash with their surroundings.
The tour starts with a history of the house explaining those who previously lived there (NatWest Bank pioneers among them) before and after the Wilberforce family. The text is written on wine-coloured card and is fitted into the rectangles of the wood panelling, which works well.
Next comes Wilberforce's story. True to the museum's aim of telling the story of slavery, just two rooms are dedicated to Wilberforce the man, and one of them is used to display for the first time his complete library of 600 books.
After a brief delve into his childhood and family background, we move to Wilberforce's parliamentary life with the 1807 local election - three months after the Abolition Act - for the County of Yorkshire in which he had to fight off a fellow Tory, Henry Lascelles, to retain the seat. There are Wilberforce artefacts such as clothes, tea set, and details of where he worshipped in Clapham.
Apart from a mention of him being anti-trade union and against women's rights, the visitor receives a one-dimensional picture of Wilberforce. Here is a man who, by all accounts, was an eccentric of his time, someone who devoted the best years of his parliamentary life to this one-man campaign to stop the trading of African people in UK waters.
And in doing so, it appears for a second that the museum has fallen into the 'Wilberfest' trap (of which the current Amazing Grace film is a shining example) of a portrait of a saint and saviour.
But what the visitor doesn't know at this point is that the galleries on abolition, much further into the museum, juxtapose the parliamentary abolition campaign with other British campaigners including Olaudah Equiano and Thomas Clarkson as well as organised African resistance in the colonies.
In the abolition section too is the fact that Britain heralded the end of the trade because of fierce economic competition in the colonies from other European powers.
But there is no mention of Wilberforce being a pawn in prime minister William Pitt's political game or Wilberforce's own maltreatment of Africans (invited Africans were screened off at an Abolition Society dinner).
One panel does raise questions over Wilberforce's tactics during the campaign: 'Wilberforce was concerned over raising the abolition issue in Parliament due to the money invested in the slave trade by MPs. Therefore he concentrated first on the abolition of the slave trade, then the abolition of slavery.'
It is true that Wilberforce was fearful of the reaction of the pro-slavery lobby. But it has been widely documented that Wilberforce was never interested in freeing the enslaved and, as historian Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery writes, he said so publicly. But then Wilberforce is Hull's most famous son.
Leaving him aside, we move onto the story of the transatlantic slave trade that takes up most of the upper floor. This section is simply called Slavery, which could be misleading to some - apart from the introductory explanation on the origins of slavery (ancient; existed in most societies; and not based on racial distinctions), it is about the Middle Passage and what came after.
It is split into seven distinct areas: West African Cultures; Capture and Enslavement; the transatlantic Slave Trade; the Middle Passage; Auctions; Plantation Life; and Resistance and Rebellion.
Large and forbidding iron shackles are encased at the centre of this introductory area. Not from the 15th or 18th century, but interestingly from Anglesey during the Iron Age. They are on loan from the National Museum Wales.
Life for West Africans before slavery is shown in the Cultures gallery and offers a broad idea of traditions and practices in different societies, although this gives the skewed impression that all those kidnapped came from West Africa. This section is rich in artefacts, with the majority of items loaned by the British Museum. Hull even has its own Benin bronze with an explanation of how it came to be in Britain.
Staff at the museum made study trips to Bristol and Liverpool, and drew on the expertise of curators and academics such as Hassan Arero of the Horniman Museum, historian Jim Walvin, and David Richardson at the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation.
Jayne Tyler, the Wilberforce Project lead officer, says particular inspiration came from the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (BECM) in Bristol.
And like Bristol's museum, the substance is there. Throughout these upper galleries there is a healthy balance between artefacts, text, quick access to facts, audiovisuals and hands-on materials, contemporary art, maps, diagrams and specially commissioned black-and-white photography of parts of Africa.
The Capture and Enslavement material is aptly set in a passage that gives the immediate feeling of being hemmed in. There are buttons to press to hear testimonies, whispered by actors, but you have to place your ear against the small speakers as it is drowned out by the audiovisual from the next gallery.
The audiovisual in the following gallery show actors dressed as John Newton, a supporter of Wilberforce; a captain of a slave ship; a young shiphand; and Olaudah Equiano and fellow abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano.
Each take turns to tell their compelling stories of almost suffocating from the smell on the ships, witnessing the rape of enslaved women and rebellion on board. It's fixating, and I challenge anyone not to come away moved and disgusted.
The largest room upstairs follows life on the plantations through the eyes of Cugoano, Mary Prince, who wrote a book about her experiences as a slave, and Thomas Thistlewood, who ran a Jamaican plantation. Again there are compelling testimonies. You can sit and watch this audiovisual on one of the few seats in the galleries.
This gallery also covers how the enslaved kept their traditions alive. There is an excellent hands-on wall map that allows visitors to make choices that the enslaved might have had to face such as whether to join a rebellion. Visitors' decisions lead to a particular fate.
After the abolition gallery visitors go back downstairs to two rooms on modern slavery, human rights and the legacies of slavery. All are deftly handled. Lives of those in bondage around the world are told in their own words via touchscreens. We hear of the campaigns of Hull's own citizens through past decades.
There is an important and well-explained centrepiece on racism as a legacy. But a more dubious Lenny Henry character costume to show the contributions made to Britain by living British Africans could have been omitted. (MP David Lammy and others are included to better effect.)
On the downside there is no shop or cafe, which means visitors will be enticed next door to Streetlife where there are both. Getting traffic in the other direction might be an issue.
Before the museum closed, it was getting 35,000 visitors a year. The target of the new museum is 43,750 (a 25 per cent increase). Reports from the museum are that on the Sunday it reopened 300 people came in every 20 minutes.
Phase Two of the Wilberforce House Museum project should start next spring - all being well with a planned lottery application. A pavilion is to house the art and craft collection, temporary gallery space and fair-trade cafe.
All who worked on this museum should be proud of their achievements and, judging by those I spoke to, they are. They consulted widely and have delivered an edifying, accessible and, on the whole, well-balanced experience. This museum is a good starting point before you take on the more detailed BECM in Bristol.
The council's literature refers to it as 'Britain's first slavery museum' - surely a smug nod westwards to the city that unveils its own dedicated transatlantic slavery museum in the summer.
