Bank of England — Slavery & the Bank
After the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the Bank removed eight paintings and two busts of governors and directors with links to slavery, and through its ‘Slavery & the Bank’ research and exhibition has formally acknowledged the institution’s role. The Bank of England, founded in 1694 and headquartered on Threadneedle Street since 1734, served the banking needs of slave-trading companies including the Royal African Company, and counted among its governors and directors men whose personal wealth was tied to the enslavement of Africans.
In June 2020, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests in Britain, the Bank announced it would remove from public display eight portraits and two busts of former governors and directors with documented links to slavery, and commissioned independent research into the Bank’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade.
That research, Slavery & the Bank, identified twenty-five individuals associated with the Bank’s governance whose lives intersected the slave economy. A public exhibition of the same name ran in the Bank of England Museum from 2022 to early 2024; the findings now inform the permanent display, and accompany every flagged portrait via the museum’s online collection and Art UK.
People
Themes
Place
Sources
- Bank of England — ‘Slavery & the Bank’ — https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/museum/whats-on/slavery-and-the-bank
- Bank of England — ‘Marking the Bank of England’s links to transatlantic slavery’ — https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/museum/online-collections/blog/marking-the-bank-of-englands-links-to-transatlantic-slavery
- Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, UCL — ‘Slavery and the Bank of England: Exploitation on Display’ — https://lbsatucl.wordpress.com/2022/10/05/slavery-and-the-bank-of-england-exploitation-on-display/