Ghosts of the British Museum - A True Story of Colonial Loot and Restless Objects

What if the British Museum isn''t a house of learning, but a vast sinkhole of still-bubbling historic injustice? What if it presents us not with a carefully ordered cross section of history but is instead a palatial trophy cabinet of colonial loot swarming with volatile and errant spirits? When artist and writer Noah Angell first heard murmurs of ghostly sightings at the British Museum he had to find out more. What started as a trickle soon became a landslide as staff old and new, from guards of formidable build to respected curators, brought forth testimonies of their inexplicable supernatural encounters. It became clear that the source of the disturbances was related to the Museum''s contents - unquiet objects, holy plunder, and restless human remains protesting their enforced stay within the colonial collection''s cases, cabinets and deep underground vaults. Be it wraiths associated with genocides, uprooted sacred beings or the afterglow of deaths that occurred inside the museum itself, according to those who have worked there, the museum is heaving with profound spectral disorder. Ghosts of the British Museum fuses storytelling, folklore and history, digs deep into our imperial past and unmasks the world''s oldest national museum as a site of ongoing conflict, where under the guise of preservation, restless objects are held against their will. It now appears that the objects are fighting back.

About the author

Noah Angell is a writer and artist who works with orally transmitted forms such as storytelling and song. This work has led him to collaborate with the Polar Museum in the north of Norway, while working in North Carolina on a documentary film on gospel singer Connie B. Steadman, and in London, where he has collected testimony of the ghosts that haunt the British Museum.

Born in the US, he was resident in London for over a decade and now lives in Berlin. This is his first book.

Product details

• Authors: Noah Angell, Angell Noah
• Publisher: Conran Octopus Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 11.04.2024
• EAN: 9781800961340
• ISBN: 978-1-80096-134-0
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 218 mm x 28 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > General, dictionaries; HISTORY / Ancient / Egypt, HISTORY / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, ART / History / General, Social & cultural history, ART / Museum Studies, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Imperialism, Colonialism & imperialism, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, Social and cultural history, Colonialism and imperialism, Ancient Egyptian religion and mythology, Ancient Egyptian religion & mythology, Museology & heritage studies, Museology and heritage studies