MMP in The Independent

Boyd Tonkin reviews the Huguenot Exhibition at Boughton House – and our contribution to it – for The Independent.

Visitors to Boughton House this month who expect to find a cosy “heritage” display of family treasures may be in for something of a shock. A room in one wing of this English answer to the palace of Versailles sets the scene for its summer exhibition. An explanatory panel has a photo of one of those familiar but still shocking signs from the boarding-houses of late-1950s London: “No Coloureds”. Next to it stands a recent picture from the southern Mediterranean of a tiny boat crammed with desperate migrants.

[…The exhibition] plants the influx of around 50,000 Huguenots into England firmly in context. It becomes one chapter in a longer story of persecution, migration and the quest for refuge. So that introduction, with its startling contemporary parallels, draws on material from the Migration Museum Project, which has also curated part of the “Adopting Britain” exhibition now at the Southbank Centre.

You can read the full article in The Independent’s Arts section (5 August 2015).

If you would like to visit the exhibition at Boughton House in Kettering, Northamptonshire, find details in our What’s On pages.

If you are unable to visit the Boughton House, you can view panels, images and objects from the exhibition in our Exhibitions pages.

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