National Museum plans for a review of the provenance of its collection including items with a “violent colonial context”

The National Museum wants to carry out an examination of its collections to flag items that have a “violent colonial context” or are “especially culturally sensitive”.

The museum said significant elements of its vast collection would never be collected today and that major work needed to be done to determine the history and provenance of items.

However, their efforts have been slowed by a lack of qualified staff and difficulties in actually accessing parts of their enormous collections, according to internal records.

The National Museum said they now planned to hire a curator early next year to begin the process of finding out the details of how items were first acquired.

However, internal records said this was likely to be a “long and complex task”.