Last weekend (Sat 1st April) our founder and Creative Director, Tara Munroe sat with the BBC’s Jennifer Harby to shed light on the Casta journey thus far.

Speaking from Leicester Museum and Gallery Tara Munroe said “I saw some paintings by the back door of the basement and, when I looked at them, I realised they weren’t like anything I had ever seen before.”I asked the curator at the time what was happening to them and he said they were probably going to get rid of them. “I said ‘Don’t do that’.”

That was the very beginning of what we have come to know as Opal22’s Casta project. The project studies a series of paintings known as Casta Paintings, one of the earliest forms of pictorial racial classification. Key tenets of the programme include restoration of the paintings, undertaken by Leicester Museum and Gallery, confirming provenance with the world’s leading authorities, and highlighting the narratives brought forth by bringing these paintings back into the public fore.

Read the full article using the link below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-65092285

Special thanks to Jennifer Harby, BBC News.

Michael Ohajuru, Art Historian, Senior Fellow of the Commonwealth Institute and panelist on the Casta, Caste and Classifications – An Academic Discussion shares his blog post on the event.

Michael Ohajuru travelled to Leicester to meet with Opal22, Ilona Katzew, Susan Deans-Smith and Professor Rebecca Earle. Upon arrival, Michael and the team visited the Conservator to see with their own eyes, the condition that the collection is in.

‘A great experience – honoured – to see how the paintings are being painstakingly, literally being brought back to life.’ – M. Ohajuru

Following a visit to the Conservators, Michael and fellow distinguished guests we’re invited to document their thoughts on camera. Stay tuned to our blog page for more snippets from Michaels journey and others who have entered the journey of Casta, Caste and Classification.

Video’s from the Casta, Caste and Classification – an Academic Discussion event will be available on the Opal22 Arts & Edutainment Youtube channel.

Read Michael’s full blog here shorturl.at/hsyY0

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/lcahm/departments/historyofart/research/projects/map/issue5/lost-leicester-casta-paintings.aspx

In 2009, Tara Munroe – Curator and Creative Director of Opal 22 Arts and Edutainment – found five remarkable paintings in the store rooms at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery. Since then she has been researching and raising awareness about the complex stories of racial classification these images tell.