This summer, the Holburne is partnering with The Museum of Colour, a digital museum celebrating the achievements of people in colour in the arts, to present a temporary display.
Keeping it Real will share portraits of writers: three at the Holburne Museum and three at the Victoria Art Gallery, from 12 July to 17 September, to highlight the importance of non-fiction.
The Holburne’s three portraits are created by artist Naomi Shewa, a multidisciplinary designer who blends creativity and professional expertise in various mediums including architecture, art, visual, graphic and web design. Her portraits are of:
Ron Ramdin: a Trinidad-born historian, novelist, and biographer whose work has significantly contributed to understanding the experiences of Black and Asian communities in Britain and the Caribbean.
Ottobah Quobna Cugoano: a powerful voice in the eighteenth-century Britain’s Black abolitionist movement and the first published African to demand the total abolition of slavery.
Dadabhai Naoroji: a pioneering Indian intellectual, political leader and economic thinker who spent over three decades in Britain agitating for India’s independence.
The project is being delivered alongside the Victoria Art Gallery, Fairfield House, Black Families Education Support Group (Black Supplementary School), Words of Colour, Bath Preservation Trust, People’s Palace Project, Queen Mary University London and is funded by Arts Council England and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Image credits: Dadabhai Naoroji, Ottobah Quobna Cugoano and Ron Ramdin by Naomi Shewa, courtesy of the artist