In this Foreign Office 'See Britain Through my Eyes' film, playwright, novelist and social commentator Bonnie Greer talks about uncovering her true heritage at the British Museum.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video clip and answer the questions below.
1 How long has she lived in Britain?
2 How many objects are there in the British Museum?
3 Why does Bonnie refer to the British Museum as the Tower of Babel?
4 What can the collection in the middle of the museum (the hub) teach us?
5 Where and when was the Ashanti drum discovered?
6 What was Bonnie told at school in the 60s?
7 What did Bonnie's dad do?
You can self-correct the activity by reading the transcript here.
Hi, I'm Bonnie Greer. I'm a playwright, novelist, commentator and I was born on the south side of Chicago. I've lived here since 1986 and I'm Deputy Chair of the British Museum. This is See Britain Through My Eyes.
The British Museum is the ultimate Enlightenment institution. We hold a collection of seven million - plus objects and we hold them for all of the world, free to all of the world. So you walk through this dark aperture, this kind of classical Greek temple, the 18th century idea of the Enlightenment. It's dark and tiny. And suddenly the museum opens up, full of light, full of movement where you see people of all colors and nations. This is like a Tower of Babel in a sense. There's so many languages represented here.
This museum embodies the notion that we better learn about our own culture in relation to other cultures. And so the colonial era actually turned London into what it still is today: a hub city. So that the notion of globalization, in its good sense, actually you could say began at this place where all the peoples of the world have left behind their story. And so it is right that this collection in this museum sits in the middle of that hub. These objects actually help us to understand how to live together when they are together.
So many objects speak to me in this museum. But the one that really talks to me particularly is the Ashanti drum.
It was discovered in Virginia in the middle of the 18th Century and is believed to have been brought there by a captain on a slaver ship. It looks like a tiny little thing here amidst all the other wonderful objects and you know, you may think, "Well, what's the big deal about this?" I was a young school girl in the beginning of the 60s. And we were told, as black kids, that we had no links to anything and Africa was a savage, crazy, brutal, inhuman place. This drum puts the lie to this idea that there was no such thing as culture in Africa. And the beauty of it, it is here in the British Museum that I'm able to begin to weave that story together for myself.
My dad, he was a factory worker. He would buy the Encyclopedia Britannica door-to-door. And of course, the Encyclopedia Britannica had the drawings of the British Museum in it. And so, I became acquainted with the Museum when I was very, very young. So now, to be a part of an institution that my dad read about and talked about to us which was started by an heiress who got a fortune through slavery. And now, at this point where I am here, an immigrant, a foreigner, Deputy Chair of the British Museum. I think it could only happen here.
