Saturdays: 9:30am - 3:00pm
Our history is shaped by people and places: discover more about African Threads at Charlton House
African Threads brings together twelve objects or groups of objects from the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust collection. Through research, community collaboration, and creative interpretation, the exhibition explores the histories, meanings, and journeys of these objects while celebrating the rich cultural heritage and contemporary creativity of African and Afro-Caribbean communities in Greenwich.
The exhibition invites visitors to consider not only what these objects are, but also the stories, people, and connections they represent. Supported by funding from the University of Greenwich, this project set out to learn more about objects in the collection that were simply labelled ‘African’. While accurate in the broadest sense, this description concealed the distinct cultures, histories, and places from which they originated. It also limited our understanding of their original meanings and significance.
We wanted to find out more. Working in collaboration with Ghanaian textile artist Lorelle Aboagye, African Studies MA researcher Alana, and members of a local Afro-Caribbean reading group, we revisited the collection through research, discussion, and shared knowledge. This process has helped us identify more specific origins for some objects, connecting them to different communities, countries, and traditions across Africa.
As part of this project, Lorelle Aboagye was invited to explore the museum’s African collections and create a new work inspired by one of the objects on display: a nineteenth-century Nigerian textile known as Aso Oke. This exhibition shares what we have learned so far. It also acknowledges what remains unknown. We still do not know how or why many of these objects entered the collection, and there is much more to discover about their histories.
Main image: Ugandan Embutuu Drum
