To mark the arrival of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, this special issue of Midlands Art Papers explores the connections between art, manufacture and empire in collections across the region.
Kate Nichols
Figs.1a & 1b: Photographs showing decorated enamel lid and mother of pearl interior. Unknown maker (Birmingham), Snuff box with enamel lid with painting of harbour with ships (1750-55), mother of pearl, enamel, chased metal, 2.3 x 5 x 7 cm, EM137, ©Wolverhampton Art Gallery
The connections between art, manufacture and empire are embodied in the cover image selected here (further explored in Maddy Clark’s Wolverhampton Midlands Arts Trail): an eighteenth-century snuff box. Skilfully manufactured and decorated in Birmingham, this object is entirely dependent on empire and slavery. Its mother-of-pearl inner was most likely sourced from South Asian or Pacific pearl divers, through imperial trading networks. Its purpose – to hold tobacco – was entirely dependent on the labour of enslaved persons on plantations in the Caribbean. Its decoration emphasises British naval power.
Articles in this issue span a wide range of art objects and geographical location, but all – like this apparently mundane snuff box – are testimony to the fact that, rather than being something that happened at a distance, imperialism permeated life in Britain. The continued existence of the Commonwealth Games might prompt further reflection on the ways in which we continue to live in imperialism’s aftermath [1].
In this editorial, I raise questions about the celebratory official histories of the Commonwealth Games, found, for example, in the ‘history’ section of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games website. With these histories in mind, I then introduce the articles assembled here for Issue 5 of Midlands Art Papers.
The Commonwealth Games formally began with the British Empire Games, held in Hamilton in Canada in 1930, but the origins of the movement date back to the journalistic correspondence of Adelaide-born Anglican clergyman and avid imperialist John Astley Cooper. In 1891 Cooper wrote a letter to The Times advocating a ‘Pan-Britannic or Pan-Anglian contest and festival’, ‘a periodical gathering of representatives of the race in a festival and contest of industry, athletics and culture’ [2]. From these first imaginings, the games were one facet of something far larger: a Festival promoting and forming the idea of a common, global ‘white settler’ identity, in order to celebrate and justify British power over colonial ‘possessions’.
Cooper proposed a Festival as means of popularising the idea of a ‘Greater Britain’, a union of white people living in so-called settler colonies (such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada). Despite a flurry of attention in the 1890s, Cooper’s suggestions for a sporting and cultural festival to be held every four years for young men of ‘English speaking races’ was overtaken (from 1892) by the Olympic movement, which held the first modern Olympic Games at Athens in 1896.
Cooper’s idea of fostering a global white settler identity through sport, industry and culture was revived in the 1911 Festival of Empire, which took place at the Crystal Palace in South London. The ‘Inter-Empire Games’ appeared at the Festival of Empire as one element of a vast array of exhibits of colonial produce and manufacture, pageants, and art. The 1911 Inter-Empire games brought teams of amateur male athletes from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and England to compete over three days in June and July, in athletics, swimming, boxing and wrestling [3].
Any athletes of colour were explicitly excluded from participating in 1911 [4]. The situation is obviously now very different, with 72 nations and territories participating, with athletes from a wide range of ethnicities and cultures. However, as Martin Polley has pointed out, since 1930, only 3 of the 22 Commonwealth Games have been hosted outside the ‘white settler’ core of Australia, Canada, Great Britain or New Zealand [5]. Further, protest against racist discrimination has remained a prominent feature of the games; in 1986, 32 nations boycotted the Commonwealth Games (held in Edinburgh) due to the Thatcher government’s continued sporting engagement with Apartheid South Africa. Maddy Clark explores art works related to these protests in her art trails through Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.
While it is perhaps obvious that the Commonwealth Games are inseparable from histories of the British Empire, their origins in the idea of fostering a global white settler identity through sport and culture is not widely known. These exclusionary origins disrupt the celebratory narratives of unity and togetherness usually told about the Commonwealth Games. They highlight how fundamentally issues of racial formation (the idea of a global white settler identity) and racism run through histories of the games.
The articles featured in this special issue explore a range of histories of race and empire in relation to art objects held in collections in the Midlands. Curator Samantha Howard examines a collection of Indian ceramics at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery to trace the connections between Stoke-on-Trent and India; these objects were donated to Stoke-on-Trent with the aim of familiarising British potters with Indian ceramics, and indicate a longstanding engagement with art making in India.
Storyteller Alison Solomon’s powerful response to the eighteenth-century sculpture Miss Clara in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts brings this miniaturised bronze rhino to life. Solomon’s essay draws our attention to the overlaps between Miss Clara’s mobility and display, and the histories of exhibited colonised peoples, and the role of exhibited peoples in the formation of ideas about racial hierarchies.
Tara Munroe and I explore connections between historical paintings of racial difference, and racism in society today in our conversation about her research, public engagement projects, and forthcoming exhibition of Casta paintings at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery. These paintings, made in eighteenth-century Mexico, were intended as a means of racially classifying the populace of multi-ethnic Caribbean societies created by colonialism and the transportation of enslaved African peoples. Munroe foregrounds the ongoing significance of these challenging images, and suggests ways in which they might be displayed in museums today.
A wide range of objects related to empire and race, and sporting cultures are explored in Maddy Clark’s Commonwealth Games themed art trails through Wolverhampton Museum and Art Gallery, and The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry. I hope that readers will be inspired by these trails – and articles in MAP 5 more generally – to discover something new about the connections between art and empire, and to ask questions about the colonial connections of other objects that you might encounter in museums.
The Commonwealth Games is inextricable from colonialism and its legacies. As the region prepares to host the games, it is an important time to reflect on how we tell these global stories of oppression, exclusion, migration and cultural interchange. The articles here demonstrate how a wide range of objects held in museums and galleries across the region are implicated in these debates, and demonstrate some of the ways in which museums and galleries in the region are engaging with these difficult – but important – questions.
Kate Nichols is Birmingham Fellow in British Art. Her research and teaching focus on British art and empire in the long nineteenth century.
Endnotes
[1] On which, see Kehinde Andrews, The New Age of Empire. How Racism and Colonialism still Rule the World (London, 2021).
[2] J. Astley Cooper, ‘The proposed Pan-Britannic or Pan-Anglian contest and festival’, The Times (30 October 1891), p. 3.
[3] South Africa was invited to compete but declined. For a detailed analysis of the organisation of the games, see K. Moore, ‘The 1911 festival of the Empire: a final fling?’’, in J. A. Mangan and R. B. Small (eds), Sport, Culture, Society. International historical and sociological perspectives (London, 1986), pp. 84-90.
[4] It appears that organisers may have considered inviting an Indian team, although this idea was quashed at an early stage. See E. Nielsen, Sport and the British World, 1900-1930: Amateurism and National Identity in Australasia and beyond (Basingstoke, 2014), p. 115.
[5] Martin Polley ‘Introduction: The Empire and Commonwealth Games and the Challenge of History,’ Sport in History, 34:3 (2014), p.386.