Libraries and leisure

Date: This exhibition is currently open and it closes on 15th November 2008.

Museum opening hours: Monday to Friday from 10.00am to 5.00pm and Saturday from 10.00am to 4.00pm.

This exhibition is a Victorian view of Southern Africa through the camera lens, the artwork and the words of men who colonised, settled and mined the wealth of a country, its people and its land.

The exhibition is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

This project was conceived at the end of 2006. The aim was to produce a body of work that explored the concept of slavery in the light of the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. The exhibition encourages the visitor to look at the influence of Cecil Rhodes and his contemporaries on Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. The exhibition is complimented by moving images sourced from The British Film Institute taken during the Boer War. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to use the stereoviews, 3D images which give an insight into Victorian photographic technology, with some powerful images of prisoner of war camps and Zulus.

Our collection stems from the later 19th century in Southern Africa.

The exhibition is about how colonialism existed and how Victorians viewed their overseas empires. The aim is not to tell a story, as much as to ask questions. The Victorian age is an age of technological evolution – the industrial revolution, and thus the views of the Victorians, can be presented in more variety than any earlier society. Photography, cinema, illustrated newspapers, and audio recording can all be found, with each image and each word in this exhibition being carefully chosen to ask questions.