Remembering Slavery 2007 was a regional initiative involving museums, galleries and other cultural organisations across the North East of England in a programme of exhibitions, events, performances, lectures and activities to explore the themes of slavery and abolition.
As part of the initiative, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle exhibited art objects from its collection, which traced the European demand for luxury goods linked to the system of plantation slavery, such as tobacco, sugar and indigo. For example, the exhibition included a number of sugar moulds and designs, alongside tobacco graters and tins. The recently conserved 'Girl with a Dog' by Philip Vilain (c. 1708) was also on display; the painting features a black servant faded into the background, revealing of eighteenth-century British society's racial divisions.
