*Throwback* How Caribbean Museums Built National Identity with Kevin Farmer
Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and CulturePlay episode
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Museums don’t just preserve history. They decide which stories become a nation’s memory and which stories get buried under polite silence. I’m joined by Kevin Farmer, Deputy Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, to talk about Caribbean museums as real tools of nation building, cultural heritage, and post-independence identity. We start by tracing the roots of colonial museums and collections built to explain the Caribbean to Europe, often without listening to Indigenous knowledge or acknowledging the realities of slavery, resistance, and survival. From there, we move into the radical energy of the post-1960s period, when new scholars, artists, national galleries, and cultural movements helped reshape what counted as “our” history and “our” creativity across the region.
Then we get practical about what museums still need to fix: whose voices were pushed aside, how co-curation and community collaboration can change exhibitions, and why documenting migration and labor history is urgent before firsthand accounts disappear. We also dig into decolonizing museums through provenance work and repatriation, and how technology can help connect Caribbean stories across borders and the diaspora.
Kevin Farmer is currently Deputy Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (BMHS). As Deputy Director of the Barbados Museum, he has the responsibility for museum exhibition programming and capital campaign fundraising. He holds a Master’s degree in History (Heritage Studies) from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, and has lectured in Archaeology at the Department of History at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and taught at the UWI Cave Hill in their MA Heritage Studies program. His research interests include the creation of cultural identity in post-colonial states, the role of museums in national development, the management and curation of archaeological resources, and the role of heritage in national development.
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