Kelvingrove Bite: Reframing the Narrative - Glassford portrait talk
This short talk by Nelson Cummins, Curator of Legacies of Slavery and Empire, will explore the rehanging of the Glassford portrait in Kelvingrove and how it may shape approaches to exploring histories and legacies of enslavement in Glasgow Life Museums moving forward.
Depicting a child enslaved by John Glassford and his family. Glassford was one of Glasgow’s ‘tobacco lords’, merchants in the 1700s who made fortunes trading in tobacco, a crop dependent on the exploitation of enslaved people working on American and Caribbean plantations. The painting hung for a long time in the People's Palace on Glasgow Green.
Long rumoured to be painted out of the portrait, work conducted by Glasgow Life Museum’s conservation team in 2007 found the enslaved child was actually obscured by dirt. However, little is known about who the enslaved child was, his name or his life. This raises questions around whose histories are recorded and preserved and how power shapes this.
Find out more about this new interpretation of the Glassford portrait here.
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