Big issues are covered in small-scale artworks in Post Abolition, which opens at Museum of London Docklands on 18 January 2010. The display features stamp designs from the 1930s onwards commemorating the abolition of slavery and it inaugurates the year-long London Festival of Stamps.
Post Abolition is created in partnership with the Sands of Time Consultancy. It features over 30 designs, together with new stamps created by students from Barnet College as part of a community project with the Museum. Key stamps in the display include a 1965 Jamaican stamp marking Paul Bogle and the Morant Bay uprising. Also featured are the ‘Black Heritage’ series of stamps launched in 1978 by the US Postal Service featuring Harriet Tubman, known as the Moses of her people for helping men and women escape from the American slave states.
Tom Wareham, Curator at the Museum of London Docklands, said: “The great thing about these stamps is that they are not just miniature works of art, they also convey what the abolition of slavery has come to mean to people in different parts of the world. This display highlights the subtle messages and symbolism often contained within the designs.”
Nigel Sadler from the Sands of Time Consultancy said: “These stamps feature people who fought for freedom, rebellion leaders who died for independence together with iconic images of emancipation and life on the plantations. Stamps providing a history of slavery and its abolition commemoration are a rare sight in museum exhibitions. Sands of Time Consultancy is pleased to have been able support the Museum of London Docklands with this display to coincide with the London Festival of Stamps.”
Post Abolition: Commemorative stamps from around the world runs until 30 June 2010 and is free to the Museum of London Docklands £5.00 annual ticket holders. Visitors can also partake in a variety of events.
www.museumoflondon.org.uk/docklands
