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The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it
If you think art history has to be pale, male and stale - think again.
Should museums be made to give back their marbles? Is it even possible to 'decolonise' our galleries? Must Rhodes fall?
From the stolen Wakandan art in Black Panther, to Emmanuel Macron's recent commitment to art restitution, and Beyoncé and Jay Z's provocative music video filmed in the Louvre, the question of decolonising our relationship with the art around us is quickly gaining traction. People are waking up to the seedy history of the world's art collections, and are starting to ask difficult questions about what the future of museums should look like.
In The Whole Picture , art historian and Uncomfortable Art Tour guide Alice Procter provides a manual for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about art, and fills in the blanks with the stories that have been left out of the art history canon for centuries.
The book is divided into four chronological sections, named after four different kinds of art space:
The Palace
The Classroom
The Memorial
The Playground
Each section tackles the fascinating and often shocking stories of five different art pieces, including the propaganda painting that the East India Company used to justify its control in India; the Maori mokomokai skulls that were traded and collected by Europeans as 'art objects'; and Kara Walker's controversial contemporary sculpture A Subtlety, which raised questions about 'appropriate' interactions with art. Through these stories, Alice brings out the underlying colonial narrative lurking beneath the art industry today, and suggests different ways of seeing and thinking about art in the modern world.
The Whole Picture is a much-needed provocation to look more critically at the accepted narratives about art, and rethink and disrupt the way we interact with the museums and galleries that display it.
Should museums be made to give back their marbles? Is it even possible to 'decolonise' our galleries? Must Rhodes fall?
From the stolen Wakandan art in Black Panther, to Emmanuel Macron's recent commitment to art restitution, and Beyoncé and Jay Z's provocative music video filmed in the Louvre, the question of decolonising our relationship with the art around us is quickly gaining traction. People are waking up to the seedy history of the world's art collections, and are starting to ask difficult questions about what the future of museums should look like.
In The Whole Picture , art historian and Uncomfortable Art Tour guide Alice Procter provides a manual for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about art, and fills in the blanks with the stories that have been left out of the art history canon for centuries.
The book is divided into four chronological sections, named after four different kinds of art space:
The Palace
The Classroom
The Memorial
The Playground
Each section tackles the fascinating and often shocking stories of five different art pieces, including the propaganda painting that the East India Company used to justify its control in India; the Maori mokomokai skulls that were traded and collected by Europeans as 'art objects'; and Kara Walker's controversial contemporary sculpture A Subtlety, which raised questions about 'appropriate' interactions with art. Through these stories, Alice brings out the underlying colonial narrative lurking beneath the art industry today, and suggests different ways of seeing and thinking about art in the modern world.
The Whole Picture is a much-needed provocation to look more critically at the accepted narratives about art, and rethink and disrupt the way we interact with the museums and galleries that display it.
350 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 19, 2020
376 people are currently reading
16218 people want to read
About the author
Alice Procter
9 books27 followersAlice A. Procter is an art historian and museum enthusiast. When she graduated in 2016 she couldn’t get a job, so she started an irreverent and low-tech podcast called The Exhibitionist, reviewing galleries and museums with friends and terrible background noise.
That turned into Uncomfortable Art Tours, unofficial guided tours exploring how major institutions came into being against a backdrop of imperialism. She runs these regularly at six sites, exploring the role colonialism played in shaping and funding national collections, looking beyond the surface of paintings to unravel the ideological aesthetics at work.
Alice’s academic work concentrates on the intersections of postcolonial art practice and colonial material culture, the curation of historical trauma, and myths of national identity. She is currently writing an MA thesis on protest, disruption and rule-breaking in art galleries.
She is Australian but grew up in London.
That turned into Uncomfortable Art Tours, unofficial guided tours exploring how major institutions came into being against a backdrop of imperialism. She runs these regularly at six sites, exploring the role colonialism played in shaping and funding national collections, looking beyond the surface of paintings to unravel the ideological aesthetics at work.
Alice’s academic work concentrates on the intersections of postcolonial art practice and colonial material culture, the curation of historical trauma, and myths of national identity. She is currently writing an MA thesis on protest, disruption and rule-breaking in art galleries.
She is Australian but grew up in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 304 reviews
December 21, 2022
Commemoration is a political act, and it is also a process rather than an end. We have to keep rethinking, keep reframing who we remember and how. This means sometimes moving monuments, or destroying them, or replacing them. It means recognising that the ways we have been taught to see are culturally produced, and learning to question what is ingrained and what is instinctual. It means starting from a place of self-awareness: what burdens or privileges do you hold, and what have you inherited?
This is a 'quick and dirty' read from the wonderful Alice Proctor as she moves between a decolonising playbook for museum and cultural heritage specialists, and examples of how museums, art galleries and cultural institutions (she doesn't discuss university libraries and archives but they are part of the picture) were created, funded and populated as part of national colonial and imperials projects - 'culture' is built on exploitation, oppression, violence, slavery, racism, sexism and genocide.
Proctor helpfully categorises museums and galleries in terms of their spaces and functions: the 'palaces', the 'classrooms', 'the memorial sites', and the 'playgrounds' - but there is more continuity between them than we might expect and exhibits are still curated and narrativised via white, European, often male, and conservative lenses.
I like Proctor's frustration and her impatience that while everyone has been talking about changing the story for years, with added urgency from 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests, very little has actually changed. As she says, it's time to stop talking and actually do something proactive (while recognising the usual problems of old white men sitting on the boards of trustees, of Tory government blackmail over funding, and the sheer scale of the job that is required).
So this isn't groundbreaking in any way but it is a succint and galvanising text - and the perfect inspirational bookish present for curatorial, research and museum collection friends.
June 16, 2020
A fantastically penetrating book that dissects the behaviour of the British empire through colonial art and how it shapes the idea of ‘good taste’ today. Procter exposes the disturbing history of art displayed in British museums and galleries and how, by not properly acknowledging this, galleries are perpetuating racist ideals. This book also explores constructive ways of dealing with statues of dubious historical figures that are currently vaunted across the western world. In addition, Procter examines how particular artists today are creating discussions about colonial history and current racial inequalities in insightful ways, like Kara Walker’s ‘Sugar Baby’. I’m surprised that this book isn’t more popular!
October 7, 2021
This is brilliant. I loved it so much. This book has genuinely changed the way I think about museums, both as spaces of oppression but also sites of change. Procter does an incredible job of exposing the brutal, pervasive legacies of imperialism in art museums. But she also gives just as much time and attention to the resilience of historically ignored communities who continue to resist imperial histories, and to share and make visible the other side(s) of these stories.
Procter also gives us the tools to reconsider museums. To look at them in a new light, to challenge them: “You are a visitor - you have powers - and you can make trouble if you want to”.
Also, Procter is such a good writer. The structure of this book is so good and she proves that intelligent, meaningful scholarship can and should be both accessible and entertaining.
Anyway, couldn’t recommend enough. Plz read so I can talk about this with people. I’ll talk about it anyway so you might as well x
Procter also gives us the tools to reconsider museums. To look at them in a new light, to challenge them: “You are a visitor - you have powers - and you can make trouble if you want to”.
Also, Procter is such a good writer. The structure of this book is so good and she proves that intelligent, meaningful scholarship can and should be both accessible and entertaining.
Anyway, couldn’t recommend enough. Plz read so I can talk about this with people. I’ll talk about it anyway so you might as well x
June 3, 2024
“Again, museums are not responsible for resolving all of the world’s problems. But sometimes it seems as if they are not even trying.”
Really enjoyed this! Definitely a book I’d recommend to anyone who consumes art in museums frequently.
Really enjoyed this! Definitely a book I’d recommend to anyone who consumes art in museums frequently.
July 29, 2025
Western European and North American culture has recently gone through a dialogue about the legacy of empire. Rather than posing revolutionary questions about the state, this dialogue has resulted in a festering culture war, largely beneficial to the already powerful.
I’m going to start this review with a bit about what I think anti-imperialism actually is - with the aim of demonstrating why this book is not written in that tradition, and why someone looking to engage critically with the negative legacy of empire should avoid this book.
...
In the late 19th century British writer J.A. Hobson theorised that capitalists would have to produce and sell more goods, while cutting costs, to outcompete each other. This, he thought, led to an over production of goods because markets would become saturated - or because exploited workers would no longer be able to afford what was being produced.
This, in turn, led capitalists to search out new markets, so that they could sell their surplus goods and increase the scope for greater production. Hobson identified this search for new and larger markets as the driver of imperialism. Understood in this way, racism became an ideological justification for an essentially economically driven process.
Vladimir Lenin finessed this concept in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin theorised that, once imperialist capitalists had expanded to fill all available space in the world, they would then have militarise their colonies and fight each other for territory (i.e. markets). This, Lenin theorised, was the origin of the First World War.
In the 20th century, following the double crisis of the First and Second World Wars, and with the support of an emergent anti-imperialist power in the Soviet Union, the colonised peoples themselves emerged as actors on the world stage. In the second half of the 20th century in particular, we saw the coming to power of radical revolutionary nationalists: Nehru in India; Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana; Sukarno in Indonesia; Nasser in Egypt; Mao Zedong in China; Fidel Castro in Cuba; and Ho Chi Min in Viet Nam to give just a few well known examples.
What all these movements had in common was the aim of building new, modern (usually socialist inspired) nation states over the imprint of the old imperial territory. What none of them wanted was to return to the cultural or technological position of a pre-colonised people.
Alongside the postcolonial state building project, many anti-colonial leaders made cultural critique of empire. Thinkers including Gandhi, Aimé Césaire, Malcolm X, and Franz Fanon discussed the idea that imperialism had stripped colonised people of their identity and dignity, and that anti-imperialism should therefore also seek to reclaim and rebuild the stolen identity of colonised peoples.
...
The Whole Picture attempts to draw on this latter tradition, using all the many and varying tools of critical theory, identity politics, and postmodernism to draw out an essentially cultural critique of imperialism.
The Whole Picture is what happens when liberalism, the substantive ideology of empire, attempts to recast itself as anti-imperialist. Alice Proctor represents of a well educated, moralistic strata of the liberal bourgeoisie, especially in and around cultural institutions like universities and museums, reacting with disgust at the historical foundations of their own class position.
But once you strip out all the Marxist, nationalist, and modernist elements - what are you left with? A culture war with an undertone of race war, albeit one where White people are caste in the role of villains. (Proctor uses the capital W to emphasise political whiteness, as opposed to whiteness as description, a mirror image of political Blackness.)
And that’s the issue with the book. It ignores the modernist aspirations of formerly colonised peoples, and substitutes revolutionary anti-imperialism with a fetishism for the "indigenous" broadly defined. It's all dangerously adjacent to the 'noble savage'. An especially galling moment was when Proctor, after 200 or so pages of admonishing imperialism, made false claims about artistic freedom in Cuba, a bastion of genuine anti-imperial practice, based on things she'd heard second-hand from a CIA asset.
Proctor places a huge amount of moral authority in the hands of ‘communities’ which represent what she believes to be indigenous or native cultures. Proctor's voice is full of anti-racist, anti-imperialist fervour, but she still conceives the world in fundamentally racialised terms. Whites vs Coloured (sorry, ‘People of Colour’); Europeans vs Natives; bad modern and good pre-modern.
So after all that, is there anything good to say about the book? Yes!
I agree with Proctor's fundamental point that our museums and galleries are reflective of an imperialist tradition, and that we are not shown ‘The Whole Picture’. This point, that galleries and museums tend to show only one point of view, which is the ideologically dominant one, is true. It’s certainly a useful exercise to lift the curtain on this and propose an alternative way of seeing. However, you'd be much better off reading John Berger's Ways of Seeing in this respect.
At its best, The Whole Picture successfully demonstrates the degree to which our cultural institutions still rest firmly on imperial foundations with their origins in the European Enlightenment. Unfortunately, instead of leading the reader towards the socialist and universalist Enlightenment tradition, Proctor has opted for a full-frontal attack on the Enlightenment itself.
Nehru, Nasser, and Nkrumah are just as much the inheritors of the Enlightenment as any white European - but between between all the Island Nations and Native Reservations, conveniently located outside of history, The Whole Picture has no space for them at all.
On the other hand, if you're looking for a rhetorically powerful but partisan intervention into the culture wars which are swallowing us all up, then this is the book for you.
I’m going to start this review with a bit about what I think anti-imperialism actually is - with the aim of demonstrating why this book is not written in that tradition, and why someone looking to engage critically with the negative legacy of empire should avoid this book.
...
In the late 19th century British writer J.A. Hobson theorised that capitalists would have to produce and sell more goods, while cutting costs, to outcompete each other. This, he thought, led to an over production of goods because markets would become saturated - or because exploited workers would no longer be able to afford what was being produced.
This, in turn, led capitalists to search out new markets, so that they could sell their surplus goods and increase the scope for greater production. Hobson identified this search for new and larger markets as the driver of imperialism. Understood in this way, racism became an ideological justification for an essentially economically driven process.
Vladimir Lenin finessed this concept in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin theorised that, once imperialist capitalists had expanded to fill all available space in the world, they would then have militarise their colonies and fight each other for territory (i.e. markets). This, Lenin theorised, was the origin of the First World War.
In the 20th century, following the double crisis of the First and Second World Wars, and with the support of an emergent anti-imperialist power in the Soviet Union, the colonised peoples themselves emerged as actors on the world stage. In the second half of the 20th century in particular, we saw the coming to power of radical revolutionary nationalists: Nehru in India; Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana; Sukarno in Indonesia; Nasser in Egypt; Mao Zedong in China; Fidel Castro in Cuba; and Ho Chi Min in Viet Nam to give just a few well known examples.
What all these movements had in common was the aim of building new, modern (usually socialist inspired) nation states over the imprint of the old imperial territory. What none of them wanted was to return to the cultural or technological position of a pre-colonised people.
Alongside the postcolonial state building project, many anti-colonial leaders made cultural critique of empire. Thinkers including Gandhi, Aimé Césaire, Malcolm X, and Franz Fanon discussed the idea that imperialism had stripped colonised people of their identity and dignity, and that anti-imperialism should therefore also seek to reclaim and rebuild the stolen identity of colonised peoples.
...
The Whole Picture attempts to draw on this latter tradition, using all the many and varying tools of critical theory, identity politics, and postmodernism to draw out an essentially cultural critique of imperialism.
The Whole Picture is what happens when liberalism, the substantive ideology of empire, attempts to recast itself as anti-imperialist. Alice Proctor represents of a well educated, moralistic strata of the liberal bourgeoisie, especially in and around cultural institutions like universities and museums, reacting with disgust at the historical foundations of their own class position.
But once you strip out all the Marxist, nationalist, and modernist elements - what are you left with? A culture war with an undertone of race war, albeit one where White people are caste in the role of villains. (Proctor uses the capital W to emphasise political whiteness, as opposed to whiteness as description, a mirror image of political Blackness.)
And that’s the issue with the book. It ignores the modernist aspirations of formerly colonised peoples, and substitutes revolutionary anti-imperialism with a fetishism for the "indigenous" broadly defined. It's all dangerously adjacent to the 'noble savage'. An especially galling moment was when Proctor, after 200 or so pages of admonishing imperialism, made false claims about artistic freedom in Cuba, a bastion of genuine anti-imperial practice, based on things she'd heard second-hand from a CIA asset.
Proctor places a huge amount of moral authority in the hands of ‘communities’ which represent what she believes to be indigenous or native cultures. Proctor's voice is full of anti-racist, anti-imperialist fervour, but she still conceives the world in fundamentally racialised terms. Whites vs Coloured (sorry, ‘People of Colour’); Europeans vs Natives; bad modern and good pre-modern.
So after all that, is there anything good to say about the book? Yes!
I agree with Proctor's fundamental point that our museums and galleries are reflective of an imperialist tradition, and that we are not shown ‘The Whole Picture’. This point, that galleries and museums tend to show only one point of view, which is the ideologically dominant one, is true. It’s certainly a useful exercise to lift the curtain on this and propose an alternative way of seeing. However, you'd be much better off reading John Berger's Ways of Seeing in this respect.
At its best, The Whole Picture successfully demonstrates the degree to which our cultural institutions still rest firmly on imperial foundations with their origins in the European Enlightenment. Unfortunately, instead of leading the reader towards the socialist and universalist Enlightenment tradition, Proctor has opted for a full-frontal attack on the Enlightenment itself.
Nehru, Nasser, and Nkrumah are just as much the inheritors of the Enlightenment as any white European - but between between all the Island Nations and Native Reservations, conveniently located outside of history, The Whole Picture has no space for them at all.
On the other hand, if you're looking for a rhetorically powerful but partisan intervention into the culture wars which are swallowing us all up, then this is the book for you.
April 15, 2023
Britų muziejuje, Luvre ir kituose muziejuose sukauptos eksponatų kolekcijos didele dalimi yra kolonializmo rezultatas. Dažniausiai lankomės ten žavėtis ir gerėtis kultūriniu paveldu, bet retai klausiame to, kaip ir kodėl jis ten atsirado. Alice Procter siūlo, kad nuo būtent nuo šio klausimo ir pradėtume savo apsilankymą muziejuje.
Knygoje ji atskleidžia, kaip modernių muziejų kolekcijas pildė 18 a. europiečiai kolonijų kūrėjai, jose dirbę diplomatai, geografinių atradimų herojai ir paprasčiausi vagys. Menas į muziejus keliavo iš užkariautų teritorijų, kolonijų, vietinių bendruomenių. Knygoje aprašomi ir dabartiniai ginčai dėl to, kam tokie meno kūriniai turėtų priklausyti.
Labiausiai įstrigo pavyzdžiai, kaip tam tikrų objektų kolekcionavimas padarė žalą vietinėms bendruomenėms. Pvz., kai europiečiai kolekcioneriai pradėjo supirkinėti mokomokai (tatuiruotos mirusių Maori kultūros žmonių galvos, kurias maoriai išsaugodavo ir laikydavo sakraliems ritualams) - jas pradėjo vogti ir pardavinėti rinkoje, dėl to padažnėjo nužudymai, nes galvos buvo itin paklausios. Šeimos nustojo laikytis šios tradicijos, nustojo taip plačiai naudoti veido tatuiruotes, nes bijojo būti dėl to nužudyti.
Knygoje daug pasvarstymų ir apie tai, kaip muziejai gali transformuotis, kaip elgtis su kolonijiniu paveldu, kaip interpretuoti viešose erdvėse vis dar stovinčias skulptūras kolonizatoriams, kaip šiuolaikinis menas gali perinterpretuoti tokį paveldą ir pan.
Iš principo tie, kas yra bendrai susipažinę su kolonializmo istorija, šioje knygoje turbūt neras daug naujo, bet kitiems bus nebloga pažintis su taip gerai, beveik iki nuobodulio "pažįstamomis" institucijomis.
Knygoje ji atskleidžia, kaip modernių muziejų kolekcijas pildė 18 a. europiečiai kolonijų kūrėjai, jose dirbę diplomatai, geografinių atradimų herojai ir paprasčiausi vagys. Menas į muziejus keliavo iš užkariautų teritorijų, kolonijų, vietinių bendruomenių. Knygoje aprašomi ir dabartiniai ginčai dėl to, kam tokie meno kūriniai turėtų priklausyti.
Labiausiai įstrigo pavyzdžiai, kaip tam tikrų objektų kolekcionavimas padarė žalą vietinėms bendruomenėms. Pvz., kai europiečiai kolekcioneriai pradėjo supirkinėti mokomokai (tatuiruotos mirusių Maori kultūros žmonių galvos, kurias maoriai išsaugodavo ir laikydavo sakraliems ritualams) - jas pradėjo vogti ir pardavinėti rinkoje, dėl to padažnėjo nužudymai, nes galvos buvo itin paklausios. Šeimos nustojo laikytis šios tradicijos, nustojo taip plačiai naudoti veido tatuiruotes, nes bijojo būti dėl to nužudyti.
Knygoje daug pasvarstymų ir apie tai, kaip muziejai gali transformuotis, kaip elgtis su kolonijiniu paveldu, kaip interpretuoti viešose erdvėse vis dar stovinčias skulptūras kolonizatoriams, kaip šiuolaikinis menas gali perinterpretuoti tokį paveldą ir pan.
Iš principo tie, kas yra bendrai susipažinę su kolonializmo istorija, šioje knygoje turbūt neras daug naujo, bet kitiems bus nebloga pažintis su taip gerai, beveik iki nuobodulio "pažįstamomis" institucijomis.
August 18, 2024
Amazing!
I just graduated with a BA in English lit. and Art History, and I noticed that the materials we were studying were mainly (surprise, surprise) Eurocentric. Despite that, my professors tried to include material that included global history. However, it always felt to me that the materials were only scratching the surface.
We NEVER mentioned museums and their direct involvement with appropriation and colonialism. We commented on museums' lack of inclusivity and appropriation in the 18th and 19th centuries and how politics and investors impacted art biennials. But it always felt like they were either afraid or reluctant to comment on today's institutions, which I can understand to a certain extent as some of the materials that were provided for us were made or sponsored by such institutions like the TATE museum or maybe it would be awkward for them to comment on institutions while touring them but it was something that was missing in the material.
Today, subjects like Art History are starting to talk about Orientalism, Exoticism, transculturation and hybridity, but there is still a lack of self-awareness as the subject of Art History was created as a way for the West to establish itself as superiors who can degrade and appropriate other cultures as they please.
Reading this was really refreshing and thought-provoking.
I just graduated with a BA in English lit. and Art History, and I noticed that the materials we were studying were mainly (surprise, surprise) Eurocentric. Despite that, my professors tried to include material that included global history. However, it always felt to me that the materials were only scratching the surface.
We NEVER mentioned museums and their direct involvement with appropriation and colonialism. We commented on museums' lack of inclusivity and appropriation in the 18th and 19th centuries and how politics and investors impacted art biennials. But it always felt like they were either afraid or reluctant to comment on today's institutions, which I can understand to a certain extent as some of the materials that were provided for us were made or sponsored by such institutions like the TATE museum or maybe it would be awkward for them to comment on institutions while touring them but it was something that was missing in the material.
Today, subjects like Art History are starting to talk about Orientalism, Exoticism, transculturation and hybridity, but there is still a lack of self-awareness as the subject of Art History was created as a way for the West to establish itself as superiors who can degrade and appropriate other cultures as they please.
Reading this was really refreshing and thought-provoking.
October 13, 2021
essential reading !!!
January 8, 2022
Glad I finished it the later parts were v thought provoking
March 25, 2020
"The Whole Picture" is a critical look at art in western museums and how these places manage to hide their colonial past. Well worth reading.
December 29, 2024
Five hundred stars. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I have long been aware of the necessity of decolonising museums (as a start) but this book is SO GOOD for outlining exactly why we need to do it and case studies of where we’ve done it well, badly, and where we’ve not tried at all (and why this matters). Will recommend this to every museum professional and artist I come into contact with for the rest of my life (or until it’s no longer necessary)
December 5, 2023
'I do not believe guilt is inherited, but responsibility is, and there is nobody alive today whose existence has not been shaped by colonialist, racist forces. That is a legacy we all live with, and we should all deal with the consequences. If you have benefitted, then soaking yourself in remorse and guilt does not help anyone. What you can do, though, is ask constantly how you have felt those benefits. At whose expense were they gained?'
October 6, 2023
4.5 stars
This is the ultimate Uncomfortable Art Tour in book form—a powerful and succinct volume that both explains and counters the paleness, maleness, and staleness of art history in the West while exploring ways of unmaking it towards something more representative of our actual history.
Procter begins her project of uncovering 'the whole picture' behind the hallowed corridors of museums and galleries—those supposedly edifying forces of public enrichment—by highlighting how the very creation of these institutions has historically been part of an imperialist project that sought to prop up 'culture' against a catalogue of its conquests and to display wealth and refinement built upon and accrued through violence, exploitation, and plunder. Carefully unpacking four different types of art spaces that exist today—functionally categorised here as The Palace, The Classroom, The Memorial, and The Playground—The Whole Picture assesses how the exhibits we see are neither neutral nor natural, but rather curated and narrativised through a white, male, colonial gaze. The image used on the cover (Portrait of an African (probably Ignatius Sancho, once identified as Olaudah Equiano) is a brilliant example of the manner in which curatorial narratives work to deliberately distort and distend facts according to the whims of the status quo, and this thread is examined closely across the book through engagement with a diverse range of 'art objects' and case studies.
Proctor is attentive to the hitherto suppressed perspectives that museum spaces are meant to obscure and foreclose from public memory—the project of decolonising museums is an important focus of this book, but the interventions it explores are not merely confined to the ones being carried out today. Instead, it centers how counternarratives and critiques of imperialist art have always existed, thereby productively refuting the conservative criticism that sees reframing historical narratives as an act of "imposing modern moral judgements on the past." The author also does a brilliant job of pointing to the continuity between colonial museums and contemporary art galleries, both of which are funded by and created in the image of those who have, and continue to, benefit from a tradition of exploitation that is colonial at the root and capitalist, racist, and white-supremacist at heart (some stirring contemporary examples include protests against funding from the Sackler family, as well as incidents where temporary art exhibits have been constructed in a prelude to gentrification).
In drawing its readers into thinking more critically about the accepted narratives around art and history, The Whole Picture also provokes rethinking and disrupting the manner in which we engage with the institutions that uphold it. Proctor is very clear about the necessity of decolonisation of any kind being a deliberate disruption, one that is not the end goal but rather a paradigm-shifting means towards more radical ends.
In many ways, what the author says in this book is far from new: the ideas, as well as their agents, have been around for far longer, and indeed stretch all the way back to the very beginning of museums. However, the author's framing here is novel in its accessibility, evocativeness, and galvanising intent—by sheer scope and method, Procter's playbook recommends itself to everyone who has ever felt uncomfortable or unrepresented in a museum.
*
While I loved every bit of the book itself, I do have a bone to pick with the paperback edition published by Cassell/ Hachette: they forgot to take out the author's references to attached images from the final copy where none exist, so that I occasionally felt like I was getting less than the experience the author intended for me. That's not very the-whole-picture on the publishers' part, now, is it?
This is the ultimate Uncomfortable Art Tour in book form—a powerful and succinct volume that both explains and counters the paleness, maleness, and staleness of art history in the West while exploring ways of unmaking it towards something more representative of our actual history.
Procter begins her project of uncovering 'the whole picture' behind the hallowed corridors of museums and galleries—those supposedly edifying forces of public enrichment—by highlighting how the very creation of these institutions has historically been part of an imperialist project that sought to prop up 'culture' against a catalogue of its conquests and to display wealth and refinement built upon and accrued through violence, exploitation, and plunder. Carefully unpacking four different types of art spaces that exist today—functionally categorised here as The Palace, The Classroom, The Memorial, and The Playground—The Whole Picture assesses how the exhibits we see are neither neutral nor natural, but rather curated and narrativised through a white, male, colonial gaze. The image used on the cover (Portrait of an African (probably Ignatius Sancho, once identified as Olaudah Equiano) is a brilliant example of the manner in which curatorial narratives work to deliberately distort and distend facts according to the whims of the status quo, and this thread is examined closely across the book through engagement with a diverse range of 'art objects' and case studies.
Proctor is attentive to the hitherto suppressed perspectives that museum spaces are meant to obscure and foreclose from public memory—the project of decolonising museums is an important focus of this book, but the interventions it explores are not merely confined to the ones being carried out today. Instead, it centers how counternarratives and critiques of imperialist art have always existed, thereby productively refuting the conservative criticism that sees reframing historical narratives as an act of "imposing modern moral judgements on the past." The author also does a brilliant job of pointing to the continuity between colonial museums and contemporary art galleries, both of which are funded by and created in the image of those who have, and continue to, benefit from a tradition of exploitation that is colonial at the root and capitalist, racist, and white-supremacist at heart (some stirring contemporary examples include protests against funding from the Sackler family, as well as incidents where temporary art exhibits have been constructed in a prelude to gentrification).
In drawing its readers into thinking more critically about the accepted narratives around art and history, The Whole Picture also provokes rethinking and disrupting the manner in which we engage with the institutions that uphold it. Proctor is very clear about the necessity of decolonisation of any kind being a deliberate disruption, one that is not the end goal but rather a paradigm-shifting means towards more radical ends.
In many ways, what the author says in this book is far from new: the ideas, as well as their agents, have been around for far longer, and indeed stretch all the way back to the very beginning of museums. However, the author's framing here is novel in its accessibility, evocativeness, and galvanising intent—by sheer scope and method, Procter's playbook recommends itself to everyone who has ever felt uncomfortable or unrepresented in a museum.
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While I loved every bit of the book itself, I do have a bone to pick with the paperback edition published by Cassell/ Hachette: they forgot to take out the author's references to attached images from the final copy where none exist, so that I occasionally felt like I was getting less than the experience the author intended for me. That's not very the-whole-picture on the publishers' part, now, is it?
December 9, 2021
Procter skilfully uncovers the colonial histories of various artworks with significant depth of analysis, while also offering ways of rethinking how we actively engage with museums. There are so many great insights in this book, but I particularly loved how Procter refutes the criticism that reframing historical narratives is a deceptive act of 'imposing modern moral judgments onto the past', and acknowledges that there have always been people who resisted colonialism and racism, but have had their contributions hidden or erased.
March 10, 2022
I liked some stories more than others but all were equally important.
March 26, 2024
need some time to collect my thoughts and explain the 3 star rating… will be back
December 8, 2022
對於一個喜歡博物館的人來說，這本書以不同的角度來看待各個種類的博物館，以及文物與策展人背後的歷史與故事。第一次讀對於各種資訊有點超乎承載，下次如有機會想買實體書來慢慢看，這樣對照展品細節比較容易一點。
推薦！4.5/5.0
推薦！4.5/5.0
October 17, 2021
reading this really makes me realize how important it is to look beyond on what was being showcased in the museum. that its important to think about what kind of stories museums tell, how they serve us, and how they represent. that its also important to understand its histories & origin, the hows and whys museum objects are being displayed to a certain extent and why it shouldnt.
alice procter started doing undercover tours in museums where she speaks about the hidden and dubious origin stories of both the institutions and the objects within them, highlighting histories of imperialism, nationalism and racism. she was able to do this for almost a year because the museum staff even thought that she was an official guide 🤣
i cant help but to really admire alice procter's intention and how passionate she is as an art historian and museum enthusiast. as an art lover myself, this was quite an eye-opening read. honestly i have never thought that theres so much more layers of stories within an object and thats captivating. but not too sure why i felt that theres still something missing in the writing & i couldnt quite follow on some of the art history.
still one of those reads where art/museum lovers shall not miss.
alice procter started doing undercover tours in museums where she speaks about the hidden and dubious origin stories of both the institutions and the objects within them, highlighting histories of imperialism, nationalism and racism. she was able to do this for almost a year because the museum staff even thought that she was an official guide 🤣
i cant help but to really admire alice procter's intention and how passionate she is as an art historian and museum enthusiast. as an art lover myself, this was quite an eye-opening read. honestly i have never thought that theres so much more layers of stories within an object and thats captivating. but not too sure why i felt that theres still something missing in the writing & i couldnt quite follow on some of the art history.
still one of those reads where art/museum lovers shall not miss.
November 30, 2021
4/5 stars
Insightful, informative, very well done. Could have been more academic but then it would have been a different book; and actually I think Procter's approach (a wide-ranging series of case studies, basically) works very effectively to both be accessible and provide depth. Kind of wishing I'd read a physical copy so I could have annotated it, although given how this reading year has gone I don't think I'd have actually managed to finished it if I'd done so. Would highly recommend.
Insightful, informative, very well done. Could have been more academic but then it would have been a different book; and actually I think Procter's approach (a wide-ranging series of case studies, basically) works very effectively to both be accessible and provide depth. Kind of wishing I'd read a physical copy so I could have annotated it, although given how this reading year has gone I don't think I'd have actually managed to finished it if I'd done so. Would highly recommend.
January 13, 2022
“I do not believe guilt is inherited, but responsibility is, and there is nobody alive today whose existence has not been shaped by colonialist, racist forces. That is a legacy we all live with, and we should all deal with the consequences. If you have benefitted, then soaking yourself in remorse and guilt does not help anyone. What you can do, though, is ask constantly how you have felt those benefits. At whose expense were they gained?”
April 1, 2022
As an arthistory student (living in Europe and learning mostly about European art) this was an important read which SHOULD be on our curriculum!
Not only does Procter include examples of artworks which have to be analyzed from a postcolonial pov, she also does a great job explaining her reasoning behind it.
Would highly recommend this to anybody who is interested in learning about how institutions (museums, galeries, etc.) shape our way of percieving art!
Not only does Procter include examples of artworks which have to be analyzed from a postcolonial pov, she also does a great job explaining her reasoning behind it.
Would highly recommend this to anybody who is interested in learning about how institutions (museums, galeries, etc.) shape our way of percieving art!
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November 23, 2022Not sure how I feel about this one to be completely honest. The information is fantastic, but I did struggle with the writing style and some of the formatting. I also found it to be kind of repetitive at points as well. I’d definitely recommend it either way, and I’m excited to discuss this in class.
July 9, 2020
So, not being any kind of student of art this book showed me my complete ignorance, and I loved it! Powerful stuff leaving me with so much to think about.
November 15, 2021
this could have been hundreds of pages longer, that's my only criticism.
April 18, 2022
Read this.
February 20, 2024
4,5
c’était super intéressant, j’ai appris pleins de choses ! j’aurais voulu que la réflexion aille un peu plus en profondeur à certains moments et qu’on s’attarde plus sur certaines œuvres / problématiques. mais le livre est très bien construit, très fluide et super bien écrit. je pense que c’est un livre parfait si on commence à s’intéresser au sujet !
c’était super intéressant, j’ai appris pleins de choses ! j’aurais voulu que la réflexion aille un peu plus en profondeur à certains moments et qu’on s’attarde plus sur certaines œuvres / problématiques. mais le livre est très bien construit, très fluide et super bien écrit. je pense que c’est un livre parfait si on commence à s’intéresser au sujet !
February 11, 2025
interesting book overall. a good introduction, but i unfortunately was very familiar with the many subjects. i did really enjoy the south pacific case studies !
March 20, 2021
Having been on some of Proctor's tours myself, I can see that her deep knowledge, personality, and wit shine through in her writing.
The way the book is written evokes meandering through a fascinating exhibit, every new piece of information pushing you forward to the next one. It's very easy to pick up this book and not notice time passing.
Anyone working in museums must read this to consider the roles they play in perpetuating white-supremecist colonialism throughout their exhibits. For the rest of us, it provides the brutal truths of decisions made behind the scenes, and suggests ways we can demand better as museum attendees.
I would simply recommend this book for everyone, white gallery- and museum-goers especially.
The way the book is written evokes meandering through a fascinating exhibit, every new piece of information pushing you forward to the next one. It's very easy to pick up this book and not notice time passing.
Anyone working in museums must read this to consider the roles they play in perpetuating white-supremecist colonialism throughout their exhibits. For the rest of us, it provides the brutal truths of decisions made behind the scenes, and suggests ways we can demand better as museum attendees.
I would simply recommend this book for everyone, white gallery- and museum-goers especially.
February 4, 2023
would have given 5⭐️ for it challenged my thinking about the role of a museum so much, but the edition I own kept referring to the illustrations that unfortunately were not part of the book. Very frustrating, and had me googling the artworks being discussed all the time which distracted me from reading.
June 25, 2021
"You are a visitor - you have powers - and you can make trouble if you want to."
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