Museums and institutions in Ireland and abroad are actively decolonizing their collections and practices – partly because of Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter campaigns, and partly because of the emergence of a more progressive approach to dealing with problematic histories.

 

Iarsmaí (Remnants) looks at Ireland’s role as a colony, and as a colonising influence in turn, through the issue of stolen skulls in TCD, and the presence of looted indigenous material from Australia in the Ulster Museum in Belfast, and from Benin City in the National Museum in Dublin. The film features the return of 13 stolen skulls from TCD to the island of Inishbofin, off the Galway coast.