American contemporary artist and curator Glenn Ligon was invited by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to intervene in the spaces of the museum in an exhibition titled Glenn Ligon: All Over the Place which is open until 2 March 2025. In London, Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke was commissioned by the British Museum to make a series of new works exhibited throughout the galleries and render his long-lasting relationship with the institution as a visitor and a researcher. This project led to the exhibition Hew Locke: What Have We Here? which was co-curated with Locke’s collaborator Indra Khanna and is open until 9 February 2025.

For the first time in the history of the Fitzwilliam Museum, a contemporary artwork is adorning the museum colonnade. Ligon’s work Waiting for the Barbarians (2021) was displayed on the façade as a way to set the tone for the exhibition really being “all over” the museum. Based on the repetition of a sentence with word variations taken from Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy’s poem Waiting for the Barbarians (1898), this neon installation epitomises Ligon’s practice of “bringing the content from the things that [he] read[s] into the space of art” as a prelude to the rest of the exhibition taking place inside the museum. Scattered across the Fitzwilliam Museum through a series of prints and paintings, Ligon’s work is rooted in the work of African American writers such as James Baldwin that he prints and layers on papers and canvas with ink and oil. Displayed throughout the Fitzwilliam Museum, Ligon’s artworks come as counterpoints to the collections, unravelling the legacies of empire, enslavement and colonisation that are intrinsic to the museum’s history. Alongside the visual disturbance created by the juxtaposition of Ligon’s work with the permanent display, the signage is a key element in pointing out to the viewer that Glenn Ligon intervened in the space and in explaining the meaning of this intervention.

In room 6 which is dedicated to 14th-16th century Italian art, the visitor’s encounter to the space is undoubtedly surprising: the walls have nearly been emptied, leaving to see the traces on the wallpaper of the paintings which were previously hung in the gallery, unravelling the Fitzwilliam’s exhibition history. In place, Ligon hung a painting of the Adoration of the Kings (c. 1520), showing Balthazar as Black alongside his Study for Negro Sunshine (Red), (2018) inspired by Gertrude Stein’s novella Three Lives. Though the first striking aspect of this installation is seeing the almost-empty gallery walls, the red labelling — a technique used throughout the exhibition which directly echoes the use of the red colour by Ligon in his own works — that comes as part and parcel of Ligon’s intervention is the next thing to catch the eye. Not only is the text a way to read Ligon’s words and process, but it also prompts the visitors to question what they are looking at and to consider their own bias when it comes to seeing and acknowledging the depiction of Black people.

One room away, in room 17 dedicated to flower paintings, inlaid furniture and clocks, Ligon did the opposite exercise and overcrowded the walls with flower paintings. Hung in a salon style to echo an 1887 photograph showing former displays at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Ligon’s Trouble rehanging brings to the fore the amassing of animal, vegetal and mineral species that took place across the colonies as a means to display the new wealth of the empire. Though they might first appear to be nothing but a European style of painting, the accumulation of these flower pictures echoes the pasts of the museum and of the empire, both inseparable. Glenn Ligon’s intervention throughout the Fitzwilliam takes all visitors — first-time and regular visitors alike — by surprise as it subversively plays with the codes of the museum yet gives space to narratives never expressed before.

In the British Museum, Hew Locke plays with another key aspect of the museum: the storage space. Where Glenn Ligon: All Over the Place was scattered throughout the permanent galleries of the Fitzwilliam, visiting Hew Locke: What Have We Here? feels like we are getting access to the British Museum’s ultimate and secret storage room. Tucked away behind the museum’s reading room of the Great Court, Hew Locke’s exhibition feels like a private space, for its size first, but also because every visitor is welcomed by Hew Locke in person, or rather in video. The room has all the storage codes with packing boxes, gridded racks, shelving and MDF wood casing. This scenography serves an organisation in small sections (Sea Passages, Sovereigns and Enslavement, Mother of Empire, Conflict in Nature, etc.) which look at how these aspects of colonisation and empire are embedded within a variety of artefacts (illustrations, jewellery, coins, sculptures, photographs and more) held in the collections of the British Museum. These stories are being told by Locke himself, in the first person, through an alternative labelling that looks like yellow Post It notes which, similarly to the red labelling in Ligon’s exhibition, give further meaning to the classic labels but also root these stories in his own experiences and challenge the visitors:

“These bells seem to be sounding an alarm from the past. Is there a problem at the Museum? Well, obviously there is a problem. Hence this discussion is taking place. It’s a call for dialogue, serious dialogue”.

In addition to these notes, several sound showers are scattered across the exhibition, letting the visitor hear Hew Locke’s questioning and reasonings as a direct way to prompt the visitors to ask themselves: What have we here? What are we looking at?

But the exhibition does more than just (re)exhibit museum collections, it also creates a conversation with some of Hew Locke’s own works. Across the exhibition can be found several of his drawings and paintings that are layered with archival imagery of and from the colonial machine, three boat sculptures, sculptures from his Souvenir series which are reworkings of Princess Alexandra, Prince Albert Edward and Queen Victoria with metalwork. Alongside these, or rather above the whole exhibition, at the top of cabinets, stand a group of Watchers which were commissioned for the exhibition and act as “the Greek chorus commenting from the sidelines” . Though we see them when we first enter the room, we quickly forget their presence over us when we have to get closer to the displays, turning on its head who is looking and who is being gazed at. Hew Locke’s exhibition is mostly confined to this temporary exhibition room, but more of the Watchers were scattered throughout the Enlightenment gallery, as a way to poke the curiosity of other museum visitors and further the discussion beyond the walls of the exhibition to other parts of the museum.

That both Hew Locke and Glenn Ligon’s show happen at the same time is not so much of a coincidence, for museums have been focusing on revisiting their histories and legacies for quite some time now. Artists’ invitations have become one of the ways to not only diversify the voices inside the museum but also open the museum’s doors to varied audiences by bridging the gap between universal museums and contemporary art institutions.

In both cases, artists are addressing the colonial and imperial legacies of the institutions by using similar curatorial strategies that juxtapose the museum collections with their own artistic practice and creations in order to reveal untold stories and challenge the visitor. Equally, they both use the medium of text as a signal of their interventions and as a mediator between the museum and its visitors, prompting critical engagement from them. In weaving new narratives into the galleries, both artists – who also happen to be the curator of their own shows – peal the complex historical layers of the Fitzwilliam Museum and British Museum thanks to a piecing together of contemporary practice, museum collections and textual engagement.