“What have we here?” is a wonderfully open question. It can be literal: what is this object before me? Or it might have a more general sense: what’s going on here? It could be prelude to an investigation, as when a detective in a police procedural asks this question upon arriving at a crime scene. Above all, it expresses some kind of curiosity, a desire to know.
All of these meanings are in play in Hew Locke’s terrific exhibition at the British Museum, what have we here?
Locke, a Guyanese-British artist, has put together a fascinating and provocative show in which he has looted (I use the term advisedly) the British Museum’s collection for the purpose of re-examining how the collection has been shaped by Britain’s imperial past.
But that makes it sound hectoring. And disturbing as the exhibition is, I found the title apt: Locke is clearly governed by curiosity and seems genuinely more interested in stimulating conversation and reflection than in lecturing his country about its moral failings.
