CAMOC Review, the magazine for museums of cities
The CAMOC Museums of Cities Review (CAMOC Review) is a space to advance knowledge in our field and to allow contributors to share their experience in depth.
Unsettling the City: Decolonial Approaches to Urban Memory and Museums
FALL-WINTER 2025
CAMOC MUSEUMS OF CITIES REVIEW
decolonising museums of cities + the potential and the reality + challenges and lessons learned + re-thinking colonial buildings and monuments + legacies for Indigenous and enslaved people + disability justice + control of historical narratives
In this edition, board member, Christine Conciatori has an interesting article focused on Exhibition Reviews: Costume Balls: Dressing Up History, 1870-1927. A temporary exhibition at the McCord Steward Museum (Montreal, Canada): An Approach to Decolonisation through a Historical Collection
The McCord Stewart Museum defines itself as Montreal’s social history museum. As a teaching and research museum, the McCord Stewart has a rich collection of over 2.5 million items of material culture, fashion and textiles, Indigenous cultural belongings, photographs and archives. The exhibition, Costume Balls: Dressing Up History, 1870-19271 , presents a selection of the costume collection as well as Indigenous cultural belongings. Under the seemingly lighthearted theme of dressing up for a fantastical event providing an escape from everyday life, the exhibition confronts the visitor with the colonial views existing in society at that time. It also makes us reflect on the long lasting impacts of these views, impacts we are still struggling with today.
The exhibition is divided into three main sections. The first one, But What Are We to Wear, sets the theme of costume ball and carnivals in Canadian society at the time. These grand events served to reinforce the notion of imperialism and colonialism in Canadian society, as well as to promote the myths related to the creation of Canada as a nation and its place within the British Empire.
At first glance, visitors are swept away by the magnificence of the costumes and the excitement that balls and carnivals created. But What Are We to Wear? is thus the first question the very select upper class participants in these events were asking themselves. These events allowed them to take on the personality of a historical figure, a character from a play or a book. The idea was not to conceal one’s identity behind a mask, which was not allowed, but to present a better version of oneself.
You can read the entire article here: https://camoc.mini.icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/CAMOC-Review-Fall-Winter-2025-Special-Decolonisation.pdf