During this past election cycle, the Grenada National Museum (GNM) was occasionally mentioned in the media, often in conjunction with the National Library. While it is true that the current closure of the Museum risks another defunct institution, such an outcome is unlikely at this stage. For one, there is still a skeleton crew working there. Secondly, it still has a Board, and they want it reopened ASAP (as will the incoming Board). The biggest risk right now is not permanent closure, but rather that the GNM will be reopened ASAP with little improvement and packed with random government offices. The Museum is falling apart. Reopening right away means ignoring all the things that need to be fixed – solely for reasons of perception and politics. That is not how the National Museum should be run. The roofs need replacing, many floors need fixing, the walls need patching and painting, the exhibits need updating — any of those things would require the Museum to (at least partially) close
Tours of estates like Dougaldston, St John, or River Antoine and Belmont, St Patrick today will reveal little to nothing of slavery unless one has knowledge of what took place here beyond the cocoa trees, sugar-cane fields, and old waterwheel technology that dates to the 18th and 19th centuries (Figures 1, 2). There were no family heirlooms to pass down, no shackles or whips that tell of the brutality, no memory of tears that tell of the suffering, no ruins of thatched houses that reveal the hearth of everyday (enslaved) lives, no drums beating out rhythms of melancholy melodies, no cultural artifacts that linger in museums, and no monuments that sing praises to heroic ancestors. It is a landscape and heritage barren of slavery except in the enduring nightmare of it all. Figure 1. River Antoine estate in St Patrick still producing rum utilizing slavery-era technology in its waterwheel and aqueduct system (courtesy Grenada National Museum) The current relic landscape, particularly the p