Explorers Dreamers and Thieves: Latin American Writers in the British Museum

by Carolina Orloff (Editor)

Explorers, Dreamers and Thieves is an adventure through memory and archives. This book is an exercise in invention that emerges from the complex history of encounter between Europe and the Americas. Following the success of Untold Microcosms – which saw ten Latin American authors write stories inspired by objects from their countries held by the British Museum – the curatorial team at the Museum and at Hay Festival have joined forces again, this time with a slightly different proposal.Six writers – Selva Almada ,Rita Indiana ,Josefa Sánchez ,Philippe Sands ,Juan Gabriel Vásquez andGabriela Weiner – were invited to examine a series of ethnographic a profusion of diaries, letters, drawings, thoughts and transactions, all referring to the acquisition of works for the collection. Using this material as a starting point, they were asked to imagine narratives about the people involved in bringing those pieces to the museum. The journey through these texts is not unlike the one that, in years past, was undertaken by the explorers, dreamers and thieves who serve as an inspiration for this book.

Genres: Nonfiction

125 pages, Paperback

Published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[Kamila Kunda]

I truly enjoyed the first volume of stories inspired by objects held by the British Museum in the anthology “Untold Microcosms”, and so I was encourage to explore the theme further. In “Explorers, Dreamers and Thieves” six Latin American authors draw inspiration from ethnographic documents that are archived in the British Museum. The collection of texts is eclectic and sheds light on various aspects of history, identity, ownership and trauma.

Personally, my favourite story was “A Memory of the World” by Selva Almada about a young migrant man working at a hotel and his dream inspired by the voice message from his mother, relating her dream, woven with rituals, folk songs and traditions. This short tale beautifully evokes those ‘fronteras invisibles’, about which the speakers talked at the Hay Festival in Querétaro in September. I listened to the full conversation (available only in Spanish on the festival’s website) and it was an excellent introduction to the book.

Even if indirectly, authors of the texts ask what the role of museums is and how much they tend to fail these days. In the conversation it was said that museums should act as repositories of memory and foster relations with others, be it cultures, people, languages. They should - just as these texts do, in particular Gabriela Wiener’s “Mummified Writer in the British Museum” and Philippe Sands’ “The Glass Arrowhead” - make us rethink the current paradigm and open space for a conversation to address injustices and colonial and national enclosures. Instead, museums often reduce exhibits to objects and treat them in isolation to the culture, history and power structures. I was impressed by how all writers - and here Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s “Paper in the Rain” was especially superb - exposed the obligation of museums to provide a reflection on violent social processes that again cannot be addressed in isolation to global phenomena and events.

A magnificent project and I wish initiatives such as this one could have a ripple effect on societies and relationships with museums worldwide.

[Ed Beron]

6 authors not ten!



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