Out of True

On my way home today I stopped off at the V&A Museum to see 'Celebrating Windrush: Tracing a Living Legacy'.

What a disappointment: there were almost no traces at all. First: not a single sign to say where to go. I asked for directions and, as I was told, 'walk[ed] through Buddhism then up the stairs to the second floor'. Except when I got to what looked like the first floor the onward stairs were blocked. I walked through gaudy silverware in search of a warder and eventually found one. Yes, the exhibition was 'just along there'. Still not a sign.

Second: the exhibition was a meagre two rooms, the first of which, labelled 'Paintings' after what was here before the exhibition was set up, contained a film clip of interviews with such Windrush* arrivals as had cut-glass BBC accents. Doctors, lawyers, servicemen, all lucky enough to be about to start a training course so they could work in in engineering manufacturing. The rest of the room contained pictures taken over the last 50 years by the British Jamaican photographer, Vanley Burke. Pictures that could have been given so much more context if anyone had cared about traces.

The second room, still labelled 'Prints and Drawings', focussed on Francis Williams, a Jamaican scholar and writer who became a British subject in 1723. I guess the point was to show that black people a) are intelligent and b) have been in Britain since before Windrush.

I also guess the point of no signposting was so that the black story appears integrated with British culture (stained glass next room along). Dare I say it's not that simple?

I'd been hoping for 'traces' of Black British contributions to art and culture since the Windrush arrived. My fault, I guess, for not reading reviews in advance. Except that when I got home I couldn't find even one review of this sorry show.

* in 1948 the HMT Empire Windrush brought one of the first large groups of post-war Caribbean immigrants from Jamaica to the United Kingdom. As the UK had a labour shortage in 1948, that year's British Nationality Act gave people from colonies the right to live and work in Britain. It did not give them nationality. See here for how Britain has treated the Windrush generation and their children since.

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So, back to other obsessions: a photo to end the year as I mean to go on.

I plan to mark the arbitrary number change tonight by being fast asleep but for those with a bit more spirit, may you all be as upright and true as you need to be tonight and through 2024.