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Museum Development

The Intercontinental Slavery Museum team, for the development of its museographic project, worked closely with the International Cultural Expertise Mission: a group of experts in the museum and cultural field in France. Two diagnostic missions were organized in October 2021 around the construction of a visitor route and in January 2022 around the establishment of our visit synopsis.

These two initial missions lead to the following components, detailed below around five main axes: a. The development and animation of the future museum. b. The rehabilitation of the entire hospital complex. c. The animation of the site and the development of a cultural offer adapted to the public. d. The creation of a regional research center on slavery, the slave trade, and engagement.

The third mission held in May 2022 was dedicated to the prefiguration path/future permanent exhibition space of the museum, working on the visitor experience. The presence of a consulting architect during this mission allowed the definition of a programming strategy to support the exhibition path project and the evolution of the historic site of the former military hospital, including its nearby urban context.

All these missions have allowed the museographic realization of the research and visit scenario constructed by the museum team.

The museal course will revolve around 10 themes, with the first theme being the history of the building as a

Theme

Title

1

The Military Hospital: A Site of Consciousness and Reconciliation

2

Why Did Chattel Slavery Exist?

3

Africa before Colonization

4

Intercontinental Slave Trade in the Southwest Indian Ocean

5

The East African Diaspora

7

Resistance and resilience

8

Abolition, post-emancipation, and its consequence

9

Genealogy and memory

10

Exhibition on the ‘Rasta’ Project – ‘Correcting the records’’

 

The spatial layout of the exhibition journey was developed in May 2022 with the collaboration of the International Cultural Expertise Mission. The objective was to determine the realization of the initial museum spaces. This early stage of scenographic work facilitated the consolidation of our visit scenario and the visualization of various exhibition spaces on the site. Therefore, our goal for 2023 is the construction of a permanent visitor route and certain spaces that could be complemented, on the one hand, by a temporary exhibition, presenting:

  • The scenography project for the continuation of the route (sketches, visualization panel of modeled spaces, etc.),
  • Behind-the-scenes of ongoing work (object research, planned work to accommodate them, ongoing research, perhaps the restitution of a thematic educational action carried out with students, as has been done in the past),
  • And possibly some artworks created within an identified artistic commission policy for the future museum.

The objective of the May 2022 mission was to define the conditions for the architectural, urban, and landscape implementation of the future Intercontinental Slavery Museum in the wing of the former hospital. For this purpose, the architect conducted a spatialization of the journey through mood sketches, providing visual representations of each space.

The second part of the mission aimed to define the potential for site development in the long term to create a true “arts district,” bringing together, in addition to the ISM, the Aapravasi Ghat, and the National Art Gallery.

The scientific and cultural project (SCP) can be described as a foundational and operational document at the core of museum project construction. The SCP of ISM Mauritius Ltd is still under construction and will soon be disseminated to our audience. The SCP includes the following information:

  • Definition of the major orientations of our institution (management, museographic, operational),
  • Definition of museum strategies (public, communication, marketing, architectural/maintenance, and museographic).

The museographic program is characterized by the following data:

  1. A detailed and structured description of the contents,
  2. Definition of the number of mediation supports and their typology:
    • Graphic supports,
    • Audiovisuals,
    • Multimedia,
    •  
  3. A final selection of objects and artworks to be integrated into the route, with indications of their presentations;
  4. Iconographic selection;
  5. Exhibition texts;
  6. Synopses of all mediation supports: audiovisuals, sound, models, multimedia, augmented reality.

This document is also a foundational document that our ISM team is working on. It will serve as a guide for the scenographer tasked with arranging and spatially translating our exhibition.

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