The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it Hardcover – Illustrated, May 26, 2020

Alice Proctor initiated her career by posing as a docent at various London museums and giving what she calls, "Uncomfortable Art Tours". She wanted a more complete story of art to be told. She wanted visitors to know how artifacts or artworks were acquired; which ones were stolen during colonization or raids of other places. She wanted the collector's and donor's intentions to be understood and revealed. In the book, Procter examines individual artifacts, the museum industry, and methods of artistic expression in a very direct, unfaltering way. I liked her straightforward and timely approach. As an artist, and someone who works with art collections, the book inspired me to rethink my own cataloging methods and rethink past exhibits that I have attended. One thing that caught my attention in particular was the exhibiting of human remains and the fascination of that. Procter points out, that given the choice, many cultures would not want bodily remains to be on view.I lived in Virginia when I was young, and my parents took advantage of living there by frequently taking us to memorial sites and museums in Washington D.C. I remember my mother's excitement when the King Tut exhibit came to the National Gallery in 1976. We stood in line for four hours and my mother was so excited to see King Tut's mummy. There was a mummy featured on the promotional materials, and so of course we expected to see one. We traversed the whole entire exhibit and there was no mummy! Perhaps the museum recognized that it would not go over well to show a mummy to children, or they couldn't get permission from Egypt, or they couldn't afford it. Whatever the reason, I found it deceitful to show it on the brochure, and I noticed the staff dealt with some disgruntled people. My mother was politely disgruntled. However, it was not until I read The Whole Picture, that I considered that it would not be appropriate to display King Tut's remains.More recently, I attended the Genghis Khan exhibition, where I did see a mummified human female. Just out of curiosity, I did several online searches of this exhibit, and in almost all of them they show a photo of the mummy. I then wondered if a female in particular was chosen over a male. I also noticed an effort to paint a picture of Genghis Khan as an explorer who was attempting to unite peoples, rather than a marauding conqueror. All that being said, I would highly recommend seeing this exhibit, and I think Procter would as well. What I took away from this book, was not that I should feel guilty about being fascinated by mummification, but that there is more to learn about this person and their life, culture, and death ritual.

I found this book immensely informative and for that reason am giving it four stars.I always thought museums acquired, conserved and exhibited various cultural artifacts for purposes of education, study and general enlightenment. Not true. It turns out museums are actively engaged in nothing less than cultural genocide. Their collections are forever tainted with traumatic histories. And those who dare visit them are complicit in the violence of appropriation. Nay, to even gaze upon such objects is itself a violent act.According to the author--a self-styled "art historian" who in real life is a sometime museum tour guide working on her Master's degree--it turns out there is almost nothing than can be done to save these wretched places. Historically donors have only acted out of the most insidious of motives. They were all white, wealthy, arrogant and controlling. They donated their collections to assert their own power and prestige...and, of course, to corrupt the minds of future generations of young, unsuspecting school children who might be docilely led (most likely in single file) through their evil establishments.To make her point the author goes after some rather easy targets: A few embarrassing paintings formerly the property of The East India Company which are now hidden somewhere within the confines of the British Foreign Office, various items looted or plundered by Captain Cook on his various sea voyages and a third-rate allegorical painting featuring Queen Victoria in all her colonial and imperial grandeur.If one wonders what can possibly be going through the minds of those mobs who are currently pulling down, destroying or desecrating commemorative statuary in the United States this book is both helpful and instructive. Their basic view and that of the author is that the general public cannot be trusted to figure things out for themselves. The masses must be educated and re-educated through constant shaming and indoctrination. Everything must be explained to them in the proper context. This book offers a preview as to how the war currently being waged on the streets outside of museums will eventually be fought inside the walls of those very same museums.

Dense in the way many art history books are, however well worth the read. It’s a part of an important conversation in art history about how colonialism is still very present in museums and galleries.

Great book, it is now part of my resource collection. A good way of teaching historical accuracy and missing narratives for so many communities and underserved populations.

So pleased I read it and hoping Alice Procter will continue to write more books.Thoughtful and inspiring well-written book.

Somewhat unwieldy writing but a thought provoking topic. A book about artwork should have photos of some of the artwork, and the author does reference photos and even cites page numbers, but there are none in the book. I have the paperback, perhaps the photos were dropped for this edition? The lack of photos makes the book less compelling.

At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is a painting entitled “Still Life with Apples” by Paul Cezanne. The painting is of seven apples. The apples are ripped out of their context of a tree. The artist who painted it was an heir to a banking fortune with no financial worries. This can be compared to the workers who picked the apples that Cezanne painted. In the plaque next to the painting, the Fitzwilliam Museum does not discuss the hardships of the fruit pickers and compare it to the luxurious lifestyle that Cezanne was able to afford. It is an omitted history and it needs changing. The least the Fitzwilliam Museum might do is to work with the agricultural sections of the Transport and General Workers’ Union for a sensitively carried special exhibition on the life of fruit pickers.Alice Proctor, author of “The Whole Picture,” a recently published book on the colonial story of art in our museums, did not make the above argument. I did to ridicule her own style of argument. For Proctor “All art is political” and “Everything in a museum is political.” As such, Cezanne’s painting of apples is political. The Kindle version of my book suggests that the word “power” and associated words such as powerful appear in the book 150 times. Proctor sees everything in terms of power relations. For her, there is always a power dynamic at work and she can always make the dynamic suit her own political argument.Consider Proctor’s discussion of Thomas Jones Barker’s, 1862-3 painting, “The Secret of England’s Greatness.” In this painting at the National Portrait Gallery a black African man is kneeling in front of Queen Victoria. The idea of a black person kneeling before a white person suits the power dynamic of which Proctor wants to be critical. The problem is that the painting is also of a man kneeling in front of woman. The idea of a powerful woman and a subordinate male does not suit Proctor’s postmodernist political outlook. As such, she has to come up with an answer. Using a concocted argument, Proctor concludes “This is not the meeting of a man and a woman, but a mother and a child.” I do not think anyone but Proctor and her political sympathisers looking at “The Secret of England’s Greatness” would see the two people in it as a mother and child but in Proctor’s world this is the only way the dynamic can work. She is critical of everything but her own views.Proctor does not show images of several of the works that she discusses because, as she explains, doing so “would be a violation, participating in a spectacle of cruelty.” Despite such a statement, she can ignore it when she wishes as with the photograph in the book of the British Museum’s argillite carving of Haida woman having her hair pulled by a man dressed in Euro-American attire with a pistol in his hand, which as Proctor states “is a scene of violence.” Perhaps Proctor likes participating in this particular spectacle of cruelty.If a museum exhibit tries to deal with racist or imperialist violence and Proctor does not like it, the artist is accused of reinforcing a cruelty and replicating the violence or lacking self-awareness. However, when an artist approved by Proctor has her worked laughed at and ridiculed on social media, this, in the world of Proctor, is not because the artist lacks self-awareness, but because the visitors to the exhibit are at best ignorant and at worse are re-enacting the violence that the artwork is designed to highlight.When it comes to art criticism and her views, Proctor expects to get away with playing a game of “Heads I win, tails you lose” with any opponent.Proctor wants museums to be political – but to suit her own political views. She poses a question: “why wouldn’t museums want to ‘contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing’?” Proctor sees no irony in accusing others of lacking self-awareness and posing that question in a rhetorical fashion.All in all this poor book which is a shame. The subtitle suggests it is a book about the colonial story of art in our museums,” an interesting subject that deserves proper treatment and not the ramblings of a political activist who appears more interested in getting retweets from her followers on Twitter than in gaining academic credibility. The book is not “The Whole Picture”; it is a politically biased account.

This book is essential reading to museum professionals, especially museum educators and history teachers. But also excellent for anyone wishing to exercise critical thinking. Accessible, thought-provoking, informative and enjoyable.

Wandering through halls of exhibits wont be the same again after reading this book. The author shines her spotlight on the way museums are curated and explorers are lauded.I visited the Maritime museum in Greenwich soon after I read it, and was much more enlightened about the collection thanks to the authors many examples and critical evaluations of how we marvel at objects that in fact are steeped in dark history of violence and theft. It's a fascinating read

This book is excellent. Brilliant format, conversational but extremely well-informed; opinionated but backs up those opinions with (in my opinion) indisputable evidence. Any museum professional, and any museum goer, would benefit from reading this book.

Very good read