Manchester Museum’s Danny Roberts introduces Africa Hub a gallery built around what is not known.
Walk into the newly launched Africa Hub at Manchester Museum and you will notice something different straight away. Some objects do not have the answers you expect. Names are missing, origins are unclear and uses are unknown.
Africa Hub is a new gallery that begins with honesty. Rather than presenting collections as complete or settled, it makes space for gaps, silences and questions, and invites visitors to pause, look closely and reflect on what is missing. Unlike many galleries or exhibitions that mark the end of years of research and collaboration, Africa Hub represents a starting point. It builds on the Museum’s existing work with diasporic communities and communities across Africa, while creating space to deepen and expand this engagement further.
Manchester Museum holds more than 40,000 objects from across Africa, many collected during the British Empire through trade, anthropology, confiscation and looting. In many cases, the only record is a donor’s name or the year an object arrived. The makers, original names, cultural meanings and the communities they belonged to were rarely documented. Africa Hub begins there.
Among the objects on display is a striking figure of a horse with an ibis on its back. Nothing is known about its traditional use, its name or the community it came from. All that is recorded is that it arrived in Manchester in 1976, donated by a private individual. Instead of filling in the blanks, the gallery leaves them visible, allowing the objects themselves to raise questions and to start a process through which the Museum can better understand the African collections it cares for and make collective decisions on how they can best inspire future generations. That process includes working with diaspora communities to develop new ways of sharing and celebrating cultural heritage and, in some cases, considering restitution to communities of origin.
This approach marks a shift in how collections are shared. The gallery becomes a place where questions are valued and where future understanding can be shaped through dialogue, research and community knowledge, rather than being completed behind the scenes.
At the heart of Africa Hub there is a community collaboration that has helped to shape some of the displays. Many of these collections have been stored away for decades but are now being redisplayed and reinterpreted through partnerships like the one with the Igbo Community Greater Manchester (ICM). ICM have worked with Lucy Edematie, Curator – African Collections from Colonial Contexts at Manchester Museum, on collaborative research focused on objects that have significance for their community and decided how these should be shown and described.
For the Museum, this kind of collaboration recognises that meaningful interpretation cannot happen without the voices of people connected to the objects. Cultural knowledge, memories and lived experience bring depth that historic records are lacking. Co-curation of this space has influenced not just what is displayed but how it is framed, offering visitors a richer and more human way of engaging with the collections.
For Honourable Mrs Sylvia Mgbeahurike of the ICM Women’s Wing, the process has been deeply personal. “We are united from Nigeria. We are the Igbos. Anywhere we are, we try to identify ourselves as a community. We have a culture of togetherness, sharing and love.” Seeing Igbo heritage represented in Manchester makes her feel at home. “It makes us feel represented. That is what diversity and inclusion are all about.”
Africa Hub also confronts difficult histories. “Some of these objects were given, some were stolen, some were taken forcefully out of conquest,” Mrs Sylvia Mgbeahurike explains. Bringing them together again is a step towards inclusiveness and shared understanding. For Emeka Onyegbuna, also a member of ICM, the gallery is about learning, connection and respect. It shows the role museums can play in preserving social heritage when communities are involved and sacred objects are treated with care.
The Museum is laying its lack of knowledge bare and extending an invitation to visitors to come and view the collections, in person and online, and share their own knowledge, experience and perspectives to create a richer narrative around the African collections. Every contribution helps reconnect these collections with the people and communities for whom they matter most.
As Onyegbuna says, “We can’t rewrite the past, but we can make sure the next generation understands it, that they can look at these collections and say, ‘This is part of me.’”
Africa Hub is free to visit, inviting audiences to explore the space and share their perspectives through conversation or written feedback. Many of the objects on display and the stories being gathered can also be explored online, extending this exchange beyond the gallery. Find out more.
