Eleanor Stephenson is the recipient of the PhD partnership with the Royal Society and University of Cambridge, meant to bolster the understanding of slavery in Jamaica. Previously, she completed both her BA and MA in History of Art at The Courtauld, where she delved into colonialism and the British Empire. Eleanor also owns a contemporary art gallery in London.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
It is a bit of a buzzword, but it does highlight systemic and institutional racism, which is an issue that has been continually debated within academic circles. For me, the intersectional approach of CRT is hugely relevant in understanding the multiple discriminations that an individual face on a daily basis.
As Cambridge is an institution which has a very long history of white supremacy and elitism, I try and bring in as much material culture as possible to tell stories in a more accessible way.
All the arts are entirely intertwined in history. Art is a product of history, both stylistically and thematically as it responds to the context in which it was produced. History is recounted and recorded in various different sources as visual sources such as painting, architectural, written sources.
Throughout the entire history of mankind, not everyone has been represented.
In the context of museum, it is definitely up to the curator to do that digging and go back to the archives. It is about using an intersectional methodology to research and display, which will then create a space that will lend itself to have more open conversations and ultimately reflect the identities of more people.
I would say that curators have a really tough time. They operate between the institution, the librarians, archivists, the gallery assistants, but they also work with the directors and the trustees. They are the ones pushing the progress of a museum, but simultaneously, they have to respond to the requests of donors, since at the end of the day, these museums are very reliant on private funds.
They could do more research. They could get more exciting loans from museums in Africa or Asia or South America, but I probably wouldn't point fingers at any specific person within an institution. It is definitely a much broader issue.
Independent museums would be interesting, but then you’d have this issue with paid exhibitions, which I believe is a huge problem because it excludes a huge amount of people. Commercial galleries and spaces have a role to play here. They don't have a museum bureaucracy nor a timeline of five to 10 years; they can literally put a show on in a couple of weeks.
I used to work for an auction house in London and I noticed the huge shortcomings of the industry and how much the artists then have to pay for them. I spoke to one of my clients and we thought of setting up something which would really support artists, both in selling their work, but also educating them on the market. Now we work with about 10 young artists under 30 years old, who are all doing extremely well.