Trials, Tragedy & Resilience…
Is an international exhibit officially opened on Montserrat on Friday, March 9, 2018 at the National Museum in Little Bay. Trials, Tragedy & Resilience is an exhibit recognizing and celebrating Montserrat’s rich cultural heritage on the 250th anniversary of the attempted St. Patrick’s Day slave uprising on 17 March 1768.
According to Executive Director Sarita Francis, MNT, she said: “This Exhibition pays tribute to those who lost their lives during that period and also to those who continue to educate and liberate our minds from mental slavery whether through formal education, the arts, or through literature. The main objective of this Exhibition today is to provide documentary evidence of 1768 attempted uprising. We have researched and worked with a number institutions to provide whatever written accounts that we can find. We are aware that the documents were written by the oppressors at the time and are written from their perspective during that era.”
In attendance for the opening ceremony was Hon. Deputy Premier Delmaude Ryan, historian Sir Howard Fergus, Hon. Leader of the Opposition Easton Farrell-Taylor and Hon. Member of Parliament Claude Hogan.
Photos of the exhibits are not allowed. However, they tell the story of the 1768 uprising primarily from the view point of the slave masters and other whites who lived on Montserrat during that period. Documents shared include legal and newspaper accounts of what happened on St Patrick’s Day in 1768 and the subsequent killings and court cases.
The exhibit will be running concurrently at the National Museum on Montserrat, the Grosscup Museum of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Department of Archaeology and Sustainable Heritage at Aarhus University in Denmark. The exhibit is co-sponsored by these institutions and the Montserrat National Trust.
The exhibition will run locally until March 19th and at the other institutions until April 20, 2018.
