SNAKES & LADDERS DEMO: Yasmin Khan invites Subhadra Das to play a game of Snakes & Ladders with a twist. The classic board game is brought to life with a bespoke deck of playing cards.

With each dice roll, they discuss controversies that have inspired MOTL’s six pillars of truth-telling, a co-created diagnostic tool summarised as WISDOM:

1. Whose Voice, 2) Information Integrity, 3) Source, 4) Design, 5) Object story and 6) Museum context.

This episode can be used as an interactive audio guide to play the Snakes & Ladders game featured at the end of the Muse-Zine. Have fun!

#Collections #Provenance #Ethics #Power #Bias #Orientalism

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

1. Indian origins of Snakes & Ladders

2. WISDOM manifesto

3. Game commences

4. Subhadra highlights some juicy case-studies and shares ideas for the blank cards

Hosted by @YasminCurates in conversation with @Sub_das (Insta)/ @littlegaudy (X).

Do you believe everything you see in museums? Share your thoughts and museum photos via #MuseumTruthLies.

Follow https://linktr.ee/museumtruthlies

CREDITS: Host, scriptwriter and editor, Yasmin Khan; Executive Producer, Marie Horner; Composer, Helen A. Wilson; Sound Design, Lucy Dearlove (supported by Lucia Scazzoccio).

Funding partners: Art South Asia Project and ZVM Rangoonwala Foundation

Recommended resources
MOTL Muse-Zine https://muse-zine.xyz

Museums and AI: Dr Oonagh Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture & Society at Goldsmith’s University, shares her visionary insights about how Artificial Intelligence is shaping the future of storytelling in museums. Can curators use AI to stop misinformation?

#AI #Archives #Datasets #Innovation

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• What drives Oonagh’s interest in AI?

• Making an ethical AI toolkit for museums.

• Which museums are using AI well?

• Funding innovative practice.

• Benefits of museums experimenting with AI

• Demystifying datasets.

• Risks for museums using AI.

• How will AI impact curating?

• What gets Oonagh out of bed and keeps her awake at night?

• Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) with Arts Council England

• Oonagh’s challenge for Yasmin.

Hosted by @YasminCurates in conversation with @OonaghTweets

Do you believe everything you see in museums? Share your thoughts and museum photos online via #MuseumTruthLies.

Follow https://linktr.ee/museumtruthlies

Recommended resources

• MOTL Muse-Zine https://muse-zine.xyz

• AI: A Museum Planning Toolkit https://themuseumsai.network/toolkit

• Developing a Responsible AI Innovation Framework for the subsidised arts and culture sector, with Arts Council England https://braiduk.org/developing-a-responsible-ai-innovation-framework-for-the-subsidised-arts-and-culture-sector-with-arts-council-england

CREDITS: Host and scriptwriter, Yasmin Khan; Executive Producer, Marie Horner; Composer, Helen A. Wilson; Sound Design, Lucy Dearlove (supported by Lucia Scazzoccio).

SPONSORS: Art South Asia Project and ZVM Rangoonwala Foundation

Curating naked truths: Tate Modern’s Director Emerita, Frances Morris appears alongside the Guerilla Girls who are a feminist artist collective from New York City that formed in 1985. They share subversive anecdotes of transforming patriarchal representations of women in museums and debate why museums are not neutral.

Episode highlights

• Do museums tell the truth?

• Censorship and missing stories

• Truth-telling advice for artists and curators

#Tate #Gallery #Art #Activism #Change #HumanRights #Advocacy #cancelculture #censorship #culturewars #socialjustice

Hosted by @YasminCurates in conversation with @GuerillaGirls and Frances Morris @Tate

Do you believe everything you see in museums? Share your thoughts and museum photos via #MuseumTruthLies.

CREDITS: Host and scriptwriter, Yasmin Khan; Executive Producer, Marie Horner; Composer, Helen A. Wilson; Sound Design, Lucy Dearlove (supported by Lucia Scazzoccio).

SPONSORS: Art South Asia Project and ZVM Rangoonwala Foundation

Recommended resources

Guerrilla Girls reveal enduring inequalities in museums and galleries at Whitechapel Gallery (2016), by Yasmin Khan, Museums + Heritage Advisor https://museumsandheritage.com/advisor/insights/guerilla-girls-reveal-enduring-inequalities-in-museums-and-galleries-at-whitechapel-gallery/

Tate Modern https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/guerrilla-girls

Guerilla Girls www.guerrillagirls.com

Guerrilla Girls – 'You Have to Question What You See' | Artist Interview | TateShots (2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uKg7hb2yoo

The White Pube https://thewhitepube.co.uk/

Museums and Climate Change: The co-directors of the Crab Museum explain how they blend humour, politics, and science to engage visitors. They critique the ethics of using fossil fuel sponsorship to fund exhibitions and galleries.

Yasmin visits the Crab Museum in Margate to see how they are blending humour, politics, science, philosophy and crabs to successfully engage visitors on environmental and social issues.

The Crab Museum team explain their anti-capitalist decolonial approach. They discuss how to exhibit contentious histories and navigate current affairs without jeopardising truth-telling.

#Biology #Capitalism #Climate #Colonialism #Crabs #Curation #Diversity #Environment #Ethics #Evolution #Funding #Fossil-Fuel #Governance #Margate #Museum #NaturalHistory #Oil #Sea #Storytelling

Hosted by @YasminCurates in conversation with @CrabMuseum.

Do you believe everything you see in museums? Share your thoughts and museum photos via #MuseumTruthLies.

Follow https://linktr.ee/museumtruthlies

CREDITS: Host, scriptwriter and editor, Yasmin Khan; Executive Producer, Marie Horner; Composer, Helen A. Wilson; Sound Design, Lucy Dearlove (supported by Lucia Scazzoccio).

Funding partners: Art South Asia Project and ZVM Rangoonwala Foundation

Recommended resources:

https://www.crabmuseum.org/

Visual Artist Peter Kennard, renowned for his political photomontage, zooms in on how museums depict war and conflict. He sheds light on the connections between art, activism and political censorship.

Peter has been at the forefront of anti-war activism for over 50 years. This episode reveals what drives him to speak truth to power and what inspires people to use his artwork to campaign for social justice.

Yasmin visits Peter in his studio ahead of the opening of his latest exhibition, Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery, in East London.

Featuring contributions from Matt Kennard (Co-founder of Declassified), Ahmed Alnaouq (Palestinian journalist), Harris Elliot (curator and artist), and Danny Robins (BBC Sounds podcaster).

#Activism #Art #Campaining #Politics #Protest #Resistance #War #Conflict #Gaza #Palestine #Ukraine #UK #Politics #News #Propaganda #Sponsorship #Censorship #Funding #Freedom

Hosted by @YasminCurates in conversation with @peterkennardx.

Do you believe everything you see in museums? Share your thoughts and museum photos using the hashtag #MuseumTruthLies.

CREDITS: Host, scriptwriter and editor, Yasmin Khan; Executive Producer, Marie Horner; Composer, Helen A. Wilson; Sound Design, Lucy Dearlove (supported by Lucia Scazzoccio).

Funding partners: Art South Asia Project and ZVM Rangoonwala Foundation

Recommended resources:

We are Not Numbers https://wearenotnumbers.org/

Declassified UK https://www.declassifieduk.org/

A/Political https://a-political.org/

The Museum of Everything (BBC Radio 4) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ffykq

Subhadra Das, Writer of Uncivilised: Ten Lies that Made the West (2024), considers how museums are dealing with the challenge to honestly interpret object provenance linked to empire. She questions if museums lie by omission.

#Empire #Eugenics #Genocide #Loot #Racism #NaturalHistory #Restitution #Decolonisation #Universities

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• Critiquing eugenics

• Nullius In Verba (take no one’s word for it)

• Do museums lie?

• Subhadra’s hopes and fears

• Decolonising museums

• Advice for the next generation of curators

Hosted by @YasminCurates in conversation with @Sub_das (Insta)/ @littlegaudy (X).

Do you believe everything you see in museums? Share your thoughts and museum photos via #MuseumTruthLies.

Follow https://linktr.ee/museumtruthlies

CREDITS: Host, scriptwriter and editor, Yasmin Khan; Executive Producer, Marie Horner; Composer, Helen A. Wilson; Sound Design, Lucy Dearlove (supported by Lucia Scazzoccio).

SPONSORS: Art South Asia Project and ZVM Rangoonwala Foundation

Recommended resources

Muse-Zine: a playbook for truth-telling in museums (2024), Edited by Yasmin Khan

Uncivilised: Ten Lies that Made the West (2024) by Subhadra Das, Hodder & Stoughton

‘Nature Read in Black and White: Decolonial Approaches to Natural History Collections’ (2018) by Miranda Lowe and Subhadra Das, NatSCA Journal https://natsca.org/sites/default/files/publications/JoNSC-Vol6-DasandLowe2018.pdf

Ghost in the archives: Multidisciplinary artists, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy divulge how they tackle the ghosts of colonial legacies by using museum archives to create their video works. They are renowned for their compelling video works on race, biology and identity. Their films expose how the pseudo-scientific pursuit of eugenics was used to justify Western colonialism. Recently showcased at the Wellcome Collection, their acclaimed Genetic Automata series featured _GOD_MODE_ (2023), Dust to Data (2021), A Lament for Power (2000), and A Terrible Fiction (2019).

These haunting video works blend historical facts with digitised simulations that serve as powerful social commentaries. Hear poetic excerpts from Dust to Data that reveal how imperialists manipulate fragments of evidence to fabricate origin stories about our past and present.

#Africa #Ancestry #Ancient #Egypt #Archaeology #Archives #Artists #Community #Elitism #Eugenics#Racism #Videogames #Identity #History #Postcolonialism #Power #Film

Hosted by @YasminCurates in conversation with @LarryAchiampong and @DavidBlandy.

Do you believe everything you see in museums? Share your thoughts and museum photos via #MuseumTruthLies.

CREDITS:

Host and scriptwriter, Yasmin Khan; Executive Producer, Marie Horner; Composer, Helen A. Wilson; Sound Design, Lucy Dearlove (supported by Lucia Scazzoccio).

Additional soundscapes from the Genetic Automata film series, courtesy of the artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy.

SPONSORS: Art South Asia Project and ZVM Rangoonwala Foundation

Recommended resources

• MOTL Muse-Zine https://muse-zine.xyz

• Khan, Yasmin, Genetic Automata, Artist interview with Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Museums Journal, Sept 2023

https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/people/2023/09/working-life-our-experiences-are-massively-different-but-that-combination-is-our-strength/