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Royal Ontario Museum apologizes for racist 1989 exhibit

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The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) issued a formal apology after a reconciliation event Wednesday night with the Coalition for the Truth About Africa (CFTA).

The apology is for the ‘Into the Heart of Africa’ exhibition that opened at the museum in November 1989.

The ROM released a statement saying, “The exhibition displayed images and words that showed the fundamentally racist ideas and attitudes of early collectors and, in doing so, unintentionally reproduced the colonial, racist and Eurocentric premises through which these collections had been acquired. Thus, Into the Heart of Africa perpetuated an atmosphere of racism and the effect of the exhibition itself was racist.”

The ROM said it expresses its deep regrets for having contributed to anti-African racism.

Rostant Rico John, CFTA spokesperson said, “The CFTA’s community gracefully accepts the apology advanced by the ROM. We jointly look forward and will work fervently to see other initiatives as agreed upon come to fruition.”

Matt Brower, a professor of museum studies at the University of Toronto, told the Canadian press that the exhibit is now held up in classrooms as an example of what curators should not do. “It was an enormous failure,” Brower said of the exhibit.