Royal Ontario Museum apologizes for contributing to racist rhetoric in 1989 exhibit
TORONTO — The Royal Ontario Museum is apologizing for contributing to anti-African racism in a controversial exhibit nearly three decades ago.
The exhibit, called Into the Heart of Africa, took place in 1989 and featured objects and images collected by soldiers and missionaries — including one highly contentious magazine cover showing a British soldier plunging a sword into the chest of a Zulu warrior.
At the time, museum staff said that the show was intended as a critical view of Canadian missionaries and soldiers who went to Africa in Victorian and Edwardian times.
But members of Toronto’s black community denounced the exhibit as racist, saying it brought pain to black Canadians because of the way it portrayed Africans while glorifying imperialism.