21 November 2005
Monday 21 November 2005 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
Britain's museum curators are overwhelmingly white. As a new Arts Council scheme sets out to change this, Isabel Hilton explores whether fast-tracking curators from the ethnic minorities is a viable solution. Plus a vast new Darwin exhibition opens in New York , and how Sinn Fein is rediscovering its roots...
Programme details
Britain's museum curators are overwhelmingly white. In a country with a complex ethnic mix, and with cultural heritage an ever more resonant issue, is this a problem in need of urgent action? As the Arts Council of England prepares to announce the first five beneficiaries of Inspire - its new trainee curatorship scheme for members of the ethnic minorities - Isabel Hilton is joined by the head of Inspire, Niru Ratnam, and by Munira Mirza, a writer on cultural policy who argues this approach is potentially dangerous...
Meanwhile in New York, a quite different controversy provides the backdrop for a new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. Darwin is the most complete collection ever of specimens, artefacts and original manuscripts related to the great Victorian naturalist. As it opens this weekend amid the ongoing American battle over Darwin's ideas, the writer Kurt Andersen joins Isabel from New York to discuss the show's impact.
On November 28th 1905, Dublin typesetter Arthur Griffith launched a non-violent Irish cultural nationalist organisation called Sinn Fein. In the years afterwards, the organisation took a rather different stance. But in the wake of the announcement that the IRA has finally put its arms beyond use, Richard English, author of a history of the IRA, tells Isabel how Griffith’s once-marginalised moderate legacy has become deeply relevant to today’s Sinn Fein.
Beyond tiny parts as servants, African Americans were a rare sight on Broadway stages in the years before 1950, especially in new plays. With the opening of rare revivals of two of the very few exceptions - Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Walk Hard, Talk Loud by Abram Hill, Night Waves explores how black American characters - and playwrights - began to make their presence felt on the American stage decades before the civil rights movement.
And in the run-up to the Turner Prize announcement, in the first of a week-long series, Time Out 's art critic Sarah Kent tells Isabel which nominee she thinks should win - and why.
Presenter: Isabel Hilton Producer: Phil Tinline
Further information
The names of those selected for the Arts Council of England's Inspire trainee curatorships will be announced on 7 December.
The Turner Prize exhibition is at Tate Britain in London until 22 January. A touring video exhibition of the nominees’ work is at Edinburgh Waverley station from 22 to 26 November.
www.tate.org.uk
Darwin is at the American Museum of Natural History until 29 May.
www.amnh.org
Walk Hard – Talk Loud by Abram Hill is at the Tricycle Theatre in north west London previews from 24 November, opens on 28 November and runs until 24 December. The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill opens at the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill in west London on 21 November and runs until 17 December.
www.gatetheatre.co.uk
www.tricycle.co.uk
