thE cultural PROGRam
CULTURE
In the history of slavery and its abolition, culture has always been a means of resistance and expression serving freedom and human dignity. Today, the expressions resulting from this history fuel both visual and performance art. They provide a thread for making this shared past known, particularly to young people, and for raising this touchy subject that has too often been obliterated.
Thus, the Fondation aims to:
- Make visible in France’s cultural heritage the traces of this history-world that brought Europe, Africa, the Americas and the Indian Ocean islands into violent contact.
- Show the wealth and complexity of the cultures born of slavery and Creolization.
- Promote contemporary cultural and artistic creation in societies born of slavery.
REVEALING SLAVERY'S PRESENCE
The Raft of the Medusa
So artistic and cultural education will reveal slavery’s presence in the advent of French culture and diversity, and show the struggles for abolition that played out in historic sites, such as the Pantheon, and emblematic works of art, like Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. Other important sites include Fort de Joux, in Pontarlier; the landscapes of Reunion Island (sites of maroon escaped-slave camps), Martinique (La Pagerie sugar-cane plantation), Guadeloupe (the Matouba, where Delgrès and his companions met their deaths), and more.