ROM Africa Gallery Reinstallation
TTTM Co-Investigator Shelley Ruth Butler and Research Assistant Ta’Ziyah Jarrett at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo: Courtesy of Shelley Ruth Butler.
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) – Canada’s largest encyclopedic museum – has a history of complex and fraught relationships with communities linked to its collections. Over the course of the TTTM project, we will embark on a reinstallation of the permanent Africa gallery through an anti-racist process grounded in fairly compensated community co-creation and co-curation. The project aims to open pathways of communication, accountability, education, and support between the ROM and diasporic communities, and will develop curatorial strategies that honour diverse, creative, and socially relevant perspectives.
team members
Shelley Ruth Butler
Shelley Ruth Butler, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist whose research, teaching, and consulting focus on legacies of colonialism, racism, and apartheid in museums and heritage sites in Canada and South Africa. She is co-editor of Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions (MQUP 2016) and author of Contested Representations: Revisiting Into the Heart of Africa (University of Toronto Press 2011). She offers “Curatorial Dreaming” workshops to museum professionals, academics, and community groups and is a Lecturer with McGill University’s Institute for the Study of Canada.
Role: Co-Investigator + Coordinating Committee
Cluster: Critical Race Museology
Ta'Ziyah Jarrett
Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Ta'Ziyah is pursuing an undergraduate degree at McGill University, majoring in Philosophy and minoring in French. Passionate about social justice and law, Ta'Ziyah gained valuable experience working as a member of the “Racialized Communities Strategy Team” at Legal Aid Ontario. She is currently an Equity Commissioner for McGill's Arts Undergraduate Society, and in her free time, Ta'Ziyah indulges in many different mediums of storytelling.
Role: Research Assistant
Cluster: Critical Race Museology
Silvia Forni
Silvia Forni, PhD is Senior Curator of Global Africa and Deputy VP of the Department of Art & Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum. From 2015 to 2018, together with Dr. Julie Crooks and Dominique Fontaine, Dr. Forni was responsible for “Of Africa”, a multiplatform project aimed to support the sustained and long-term promotion of the cultural and creative diversity of Africa and its diaspora through an engagement with the collections in the museum, and in dialogue with contemporary artists and creators. Silvia is also Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
Role: Co-Investigator
Cluster: Critical Race Museology
Candide Uyanze
Candide Uyanze is a graduate student at OCAD University. She has worked and volunteered for several organizations in the arts, media, academic, and non-profit sectors as a communication intern and research assistant. She is currently working towards a career as a cultural industry worker and multimedia producer, with the goal of empowering emerging creatives to tell their own stories. Her research interests include free open source software for multimedia production, the digital divide, digital humanities, representation in the media, and inclusivity through technology.
Role: Research Assistant
Cluster: Critical Race Museology
Andrea Fatona
Andrea Fatona is an Independent Curator and an Associate Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. She is concerned with issues of equity within the sphere of the arts and the pedagogical possibilities of artworks produced by ‘other’ Canadians in articulating broader perspectives on Canadian identities. Fatona is the recipient of awards from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and was the 2017/18 OCAD U-Massey Fellow. She currently holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Canadian Black Diasporic Cultural Production at OCAD U.
Role: Collaborator
Cluster: Critical Race Museology
Malaika Eyoh
Malaika Eyoh is a writer and cultural worker. They graduated with an Honors Degree in African Studies and Political Science from the University of Toronto in 2021. Malaika is the current Content Marketing Coordinator at the Nia Centre for the Arts. As a researcher, Malaika worked as a summer fellow with the Jackman Institute for the Humanities SiR programme in 2020, and has contributed to research projects with the Caribbean Studies Department and Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto. Away from work, Malaika writes short fiction occasionally and is interested in exploring filmmaking.
Role: Research Assistant
Cluster: Critical Race Museology