AFRICA FROM HERE

The Montreal’s Africa Exhibition

THE BEGINNING OF A PARTICIPATORY EXPERIENCE

 

AT LAST… AN AFROMUSEUM!

 

The Afromuseum is pleased to celebrate its official inauguration with this very first exhibition. It will be the first of a series allowing the public to discover Montreal’s Black communities through the experiences and journeys of its guide personalities.

 

The presence of Africans and persons of African descent in Quebec goes back more than 300 years but remains largely unknown. Many Quebeckers still believe that Blacks arrived only recently. However, Blacks have always been part of the Quebec and Canadian experience, since the first moments of European colonization, French, then British.

 

Montreal, a major gateway to Canada and Quebec, has a great diversity of communities from all regions of the world. But unlike many of them, communities of African descent are not concentrated in one neighborhood or part of the city. They live everywhere in the territory.

 

ONE EXHIBITION, SEVERAL SEGMENTS

Montreal’s Africa will be a participatory investigation in several consecutive segments engaging Montrealers of all origins to identify the places, events and people who have marked and mark the presence of Afro-descendants in the city. Everybody is invited to discover and share their cherished places, their great and small history, and their heritage, both tangible and intangible.

 

Our first guide is Dorothy W. Williams, who holds a Masters in History and a Ph.D. in Library Sciences, a fifth-generation Afro-Montrealer. Dr. Williams is an author, historian, public speaker, university professor and a recognised specialist on Black history in Canada. She is also a woman strongly involved in her community.

 

We hope this exhibition will help all of us achieve a better understanding of our common history and, give us a clearer sense of our identities.

 

Mushagalusa Chigoho

Executive Director for the Afromuseum