Templeton World Charity Foundation Officials Tour Pompey Museum

Fri, Feb 27th 2015, 01:38 PM

Generous Grant Makes Latest Special Exhibition and Future Permanent Exhibition Possible

This month, officials from Templeton World Charity Foundation toured the Wade in the Water: the Peter Mowell, the Last Slave Ship in The Bahamas exhibition at the newly restored Pompey Museum. A $380,000 grant from the Foundation to the Antiquities, Monuments & Museums Corporation (AMMC) allowed the Corporation to fund the temporary exhibition and to develop an educational program at the museum. This major sponsorship will also contribute to a permanent exhibition at Pompey.

AMMC officials Dr. Keith Tinker, Director, Alexander Flowers, Corporation Secretary, Kim Outten Stubbs, Chief Curator and Tonya Fernander, Museum Supervisor were on hand to welcome special guests Betty Roberts, President of the Templeton World Charity Foundation and CEO of First Trust Bank Ltd and Sandra Darville, Asst. Financial Controller, First Trust Bank Ltd. Museum consultants from HistoryRemake and Riggs Ward joined the team from Templeton and AMMC. 


Twice destroyed by fire, Pompey Museum is important to the preservation of Bahamian history—specifically to document the impact of slavery in The Bahamas. “Through restoration and reopening of the Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation, we at the AMMC are fulfilling our mandate to guard our Bahamian legacy,” said the Corporation’s Chief Curator Kim Outten Stubbs. “The specific mission of the Pompey Museum is to preserve and interpret the experience of slavery throughout the ages, particularly transatlantic slavery and its aftermath in The Bahamas.The museum has an opportunity to scrutinize the tangible and intangible realities of slavery, whether the atrocities of the transatlantic or the horror of today’s human trafficking and child slavery.”

AMMC’s mission for Pompey is in line with Sir John Templeton’s core goal of preserving freedom. “The planned transformation of the Pompey Museum provided an opportunity for the Foundation to showcase the importance of freedom everywhere, highlighting the unique historical experience of slavery in The Bahamas and the need to guard against erosion of any aspect of individual freedom which may create an environment which allows slavery, in any form, to thrive,” said Templeton President Betty Roberts. “Sir John’s strong commitment to individual freedom and free markets, reflected in a core funding area of the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc., had a very wide intended scope - predicated on the belief that safeguarding all elements of individual freedom is essential to promoting a healthy, prosperous, and ethical society.”

The Pompey Museum at Vendue House, was devastated by a fire in September 2001 and again in December 2011. The museum reopened in November 2014 with the powerful exhibition Wade in the Water, chronicling the plight of the enslaved Africans shipped wrecked off Lynyard Cay in the Abacos in 1860. The exhibition, designed by Bahamian artist John Beadle with graphics support by Ambrose Fernander, also includes a replica depiction of the wreck site created by Dan O’Neil whose work is well known in museums in the United States and Europe. “It is such a pleasure to be reopening the Pompey Museum after three years of restoration and recreation. This new beginning for the Pompey Museum was made possible because of Templeton’s donation and the out pouring of concern by Bahamians who, from the very day of the fire, demanded that the museum be resurrected,” Outten Stubbs said. “We were able to salvage books and metal objects. We are now appealing to persons with objects that relate to the experience of slavery to contact us about possible acquisitions to help us rebuild the collection for the museum.

”Today, the museum is outfitted with a state-of-the-art surveillance system, a new education center and a gift store. AMMC will hosts lecture series at Venue House along with special events with Downtown Nassau Partnership and Pompey Square.

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