Apartheid, The South African Mirror: Instuments of Racial Classification

posted by Ismail Farouk at Sunday, September 30, 2007

Earlier this year, I conducted some research for the exhibition, "Apartheid: The South African Mirror", which opened last week at the CCCB in Barcelona. The exhibition looks at South African racism as a mirror for European racism. It traces the origins of modern racism, it follows it's spread throughout the world from the colonial era to the wealthiest regions of the world in the post-colonial era.

My contribution focussed on objects related to 'racial classification'. For this purpose, I visited the Wits Anatomy Museum where the following instruments of measurement and African face masks were sourced.

The Von Luschan Scale consists of rocks of varying colour and was an early instrument used to classify African skin clour. They were replaced by electro spectrometers during the 1950's.


This skull of French origin forms part of a series of crania which depicts the 'ideal' features of race. The skull shown here is the 'ideal' Caucasian skull. Go figure?


This African Mask from the Robert Dart Collection was created as a once of object which cannot be reproduced. The museum has an extensive collection of African masks which were created to classify African racial differentiation. The collection is somewhat controversial because of the infringements on human rights and the objectification of African people.

There has been some debate on removing the collection from display. I think that the collection provides an important resource for all of us to learn from and so it needs to remain accessible to the public.

Labels: Apartheid, Barcelona, Exhibitions, Projects, Race